On a polluted day, the air can look like a grey haze hanging over a city, obscuring buildings and making every breath feel heavier. But what if some of that pollution could be collected, transformed and given a new purpose — not as waste, but as a material used to build our homes and workplaces?

Mumbai-based architect Tejas Sidnal is exploring precisely that possibility. Through his startup, Carbon Craft Design, he is turning recovered black carbon into architectural tiles, giving a second life to a pollutant while rethinking how building materials are made.

The idea took shape when Sidnal, while studying architecture, became fascinated by biomimicry — the practice of drawing inspiration from nature to solve human problems. He began questioning what truly makes a society healthy, looking beyond grand buildings to the essentials of clean air, water and food.

This led him to a contradiction: the construction industry itself contributes significantly to global carbon emissions, yet the materials used to create our built environment are rarely viewed through the lens of pollution.

Could the very carbon waste contributing to the problem become part of the solution?

In 2020, Sidnal launched Carbon Craft Design to turn this question into a tangible innovation: Carbon Tiles.

How does carbon waste become a tile?

Black carbon is produced by the........

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