These benches are made from £2.5m worth of shredded banknotes

The Bank of England might not be the first place you’d think to go for lessons in the creative repurposing of waste, but circularity is the story that the Bank of England is exploring this London Design Festival. Currently installed in the Bank’s walnut-furnished former Stock Room is ’Reconstructing Value’, a collaboration between Saskia Boersma, head of the Bank of England Museum, material specialists Surface Matter, and Plasticiet, a studio focused on upgrading recycled matter through design.

The pop-up exhibition features benches made from a material specially developed for the project, created from £2.5m worth of shredded decommissioned banknotes. When no longer fit for purpose as precious tender, retired tenners are in fact no more than polypropylene waste, useless in our pockets but rich food for creative minds.

‘Reconstructing Value’: circularity at the Bank of England

The bank’s first engagement with the creative community came during last year’s LDF, when a project with Kessels Kramer invited 17 artists to take part in an exhibition at the museum entitled ‘Currency of the Future’, bringing fresh energy into the financial institution. A subsequent meeting between Boersma and Surface Matter highlighted the importance of circularity within the Bank's context, and the potential to give new life and value to a vast volume of old notes through design.

The idea was simple – the execution harder. 'Developing a new material is always complex and comes with risk,' explains Jane Campbell, strategy director at Surface Matter. 'Add in operational hurdles like security protocols and logistics between recycling partners, and there were a lot of moving parts. We also needed to strike a design balance – making a modern material that’s respectful of the bank’s historic, baroque setting. That meant navigating budget, time and aesthetic constraints, all while keeping the pieces impactful and functional.'

This is where the Delft-based material and design studio Plasticiet came in, using its expertise in the field to beautifully transform the humble waste into a piece of refined, high-end furniture. The new material and finely crafted forms easily hold their own in the stately interior, effortlessly demonstrating how value can be transformed through design.

For the occasion, the elegant curved benches are arranged into the form of a pound symbol. Around the periphery of the space are curated palettes of recycled and recyclable materials, created to underscore the story of reassigned value, and make the bridge between modern materials and architectural heritage.

Each palette nods to the colourways of British banknotes, while also reflecting architectural details from across the bank: the patina of aged bronze, the softness of Portland stone, the intricacy of mosaic flooring, the iridescence of the rotunda glass. The installation complements the adjacent Building of the Bank exhibition, which tracks the evolution of the bank’s design, from Sir John Soane’s original architecture to its present-day structure.

'The aim is to challenge assumptions and where we assign meaning and value – we often associate “recycled” with cheap, temporary or throwaway. These materials flip that idea. They’re enduring, refined, and able to stand proudly in a place steeped in heritage,' says Campbell. It’s a story of riches to rags to riches.

‘Reconstructing Value’, 15-21 September 2025, Bank of England Museum, London EC2R 8AH