When New York locked down in 2020, and shopfronts across the city were barricaded in plywood through the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, most of that material was destined for landfill the moment it came down, but the New York studio of Australian architecture firm BVN saw a city’s worth of raw stock, and in June 2020 founded re-ply, the cost-effective, fully recycled kit of parts for pop-up restaurants, exhibition and co-working spaces that we were delighted to receive into our Australian Designed International Projects category, alongside entries for Sustainability and Small Budget merit. Led by BVN principal Bill Dowzer with designers Nick Flutter and Nikita Notowidigdo, the initiative was a micro-scale translation of the design-for-manufacture thinking the practice had spent five years developing for flexible workplaces, with CNC-cut components engineered so that detailing was agnostic to material thickness, meaning almost any salvaged sheet of plywood could enter the system.
Working closely with CNC-equipped fabricators, the team compressed the timeline from design to installation to as little as 6 weeks, delivering more than 25 projects. For winter, they added a modular canopy designed on greenhouse principles to passively warm the outdoor spaces beneath.
A kit of parts with no materials bill
The economics were as radical as the design, and the entrant did not overstate it when BVN told us in its submission that “re-ply has used entirely reclaimed and repurposed plywood therefore has no materials cost,” with the initiative’s 3D fabrication files able to be sent to any CNC woodworking operation, keeping manufacture local, costs low and the total project spend under $200,000. Because the kit is installed rather than constructed on site, structures can be deconstructed, relocated or modified as needs change, a working demonstration of circular thinking at street scale, and one embraced by some of New York’s best known hospitality names, including Gramercy Tavern, Crown Shy, NeueHouse, Scarpetta and The Rockefeller Center.
BVN has since widened its scope beyond plywood to other reclaimed materials, evolving the re-ply model in Australia, a reminder that the humblest material, salvaged and cut with care, can still become architecture that brings people back together.
Re-ply was entered in the Australian Designed International Projects category at the Australian Timber Design Awards, carrying Sustainability and Small Budget merit. From a city-wide social initiative to a single planter, we celebrate timber projects of every scale. Entries for the 2026 Australian Timber Design Awards close this Friday 10 July, enter now at timberdesignawards.com.au.