RE-CREATING TERRA, ONE CLAY TILE AT A TIME
When RE-CREATE was awarded support under Horizon 2020, it marked a milestone in a journey that had begun years earlier, not in a laboratory or boardroom, but in a young designer’s quiet discomfort with the way things were made.
“I started it with my ten fingers,” says Adital Ela, founder and CEO of CRIATERRA. “It was really a vision of developing building products that are not fired and are fully circular.”
Long before grants and production lines, there was simply curiosity, and a sense that something was wrong. Trained as an industrial designer in the 1990s, Adital recalls how products were taught as objects to be separated from nature. “We treated materials with the most heat, the most chemicals, the most force, just to detach them from the environment so they would last.” Durability was prized, but at a hidden cost.
That unease stayed with her. Determined to explore alternatives, she pursued a master’s degree at the Design Academy Eindhoven, asking a deeper question: how might we design in a way that respects natural cycles rather than breaks them? Her research led her to indigenous material cultures around the world.
The turning point came in India. During fieldwork, she encountered a simple clay cup used for chai. It was shaped from local clay, dried in the sun, and, after use, thrown back onto the ground to return to the earth. “At first I thought, what are these crazy people doing?” she laughs. “Why are they throwing cups on the ground?”
Then came the realisation. Minimal energy. A short, purposeful life. A safe return to nature. “This is an ingenious material cycle,” she says. “We borrow clay, apply the least energy needed to make it functional, and then return it unharmed to the biosphere.” At 25, she remembers thinking, “One day I will build a factory that works on these principles”.
That promise eventually evolved into RE-CREATE, a project aligned with the European Green Deal’s urgent call to transform the building sector. Without action, energy demand in construction could rise by 50% by 2050. The production of conventional building materials is carbon-intensive, resource-hungry and often leaves behind non-biodegradable waste. RE-CREATE proposes something radically different: regenerative construction materials made largely from by-products and recycled resources, produced with minimal energy and emissions, and designed to be recyclable and biodegradable at the end of their life.
Yet the early days were spent working solo in a deeply focused way. For a full year, Adital conducted hands-on experiments herself, testing clay-based formulations and circular processes. “It was really hands-on research that I did on my own,” she says, until gradually an “A-Team” began to form.
A colleague introduced her to a materials scientist, Zvi Cohen, a PhD researcher deeply committed to circular materials. “In the beginning, he thought it was impossible,” she admits. “But he was open to the challenge.” Today, he serves as Chief Material Scientist at CRIATERRA, bringing scientific rigour to what had begun as intuition. Their partnership blended design thinking with material science, a natural chemistry that grounded vision in evidence.
Another key figure, Daphna Wiener, joined after mentoring the company through an accelerator programme and now serves as Chairperson. Her instinctive belief in the technology’s potential helped to strengthen both governance and strategic direction.
What began as one woman’s experiment gradually evolved into a committed, multidisciplinary team. Over time, additional key figures joined the journey, including Leat Applbaum (Board Director), Ziv Maor (Production Manager), Sivan Abramovich (VP Finance), Dudu Dahan (Design and R&D), Sharon Saul (Production Planning and Control) and others.