Biowaste as ArchitectureARCHITECTURE, MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT

Creating biodegradable alternatives for common building materials in pursuit of a circular building economy.

Natural resources are currently being extracted from the Earth at an unsustainable rate. The United Nations reports that the extraction of primary materials has more than tripled in the last 40 years, and that this extractive process is expected to soar alongside global population growth.

Common building materials have negative impacts on the environment both through the extraction process and the disposal + removal process. Many of these materials are toxic and create massive volumes of waste, often damaging surrounding ecosystems.
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Discourse surrounding sustainability and climate change have become increasingly more prominent in the realm of architecture in the last 20 years, and an emergence of adaptive reuse and circular design has created opportunity for a revolution in regards to how we think about architectural materials.
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Creating biodegradable alternatives for common building materials will provide the opportunity for buildings and their related materials to be truly circular and create opportunities for life to grow from them once more.

Featured in the Material Acts Exhibit at Craft Contemporary as a part of Getty PST Art 2024
ADVISED BY PROFESSOR RON RAEL, IN COLLABORATION WITH ANNIKA YU

UC BERKELEY ARCHITECTURE - MATERIAL RESEARCH THESIS 2022

Images from the Material Acts Exhibit at Craft Contemporary as a part of Getty PST Art 2024

Phase 1: Material Library

Primarily using food waste and kitchen products, we've created a material library of biodegradable sheet goods.

By adjusting and experimenting with their contents, we were able to produce 50+ different samples that vary in flexibility, strength, opacity, and color based on the ingredients used.

The library and framework act as an educational tool in democratizing material production, as activism in support of alternatives to petroleum based materials, and as a stepping stone towards future explorations into ideas of bio-fabrication, the circular economy, and repurposing waste.

MATERIAL COMPOSITION

SHEET GOOD PRODUCTION PROCESS

Natural dyes from left to right: coffee, onion skin, red beet, spinach, turmeric, carrot, red cabbage (diluted), red cabbage, corn starch, gelatin, alginate, and calcium chloride.

Casted beet-dyed bioplastic, ready to be lasercut.

Display for hands-on encounters and experiential learning

Casting process using wooden frames and heated bioplastic.

Phase 2: Material Crafting

After creating a comprehensive material library, we began to experiment with ways to manipulate our sheet goods by pleating, cutting, molding, and extruding our materials.

These manipulations created avenues of opportunity to imagine how these new materials could have practical applications in which they would not only act as an alternative to petroleum basxed materials, but as unique materials in their own right.

LASERCUTTING SAMPLES

Auxetic Pattern Cutting
In order to manipulate some of the more rigid bioplastics, we chose to lasercut auxetic patterns onto them to allow them to stretch in both the x and y directions.

MATERIAL APPLICATIONS: SEWN GARMENTS

Beet-dyed bioplastic bag

Auxetic pattern cut stretch tank top

Phase 3: Material Outcomes

After crafting a variety of bioplastics using food waste and other organic materials, we explored their potential as viable architectural elements by incorporating them into physical models.

This process involved playing with scale to test how these materials could replace traditional building materials in architectural applications. We designed 12 architectural models, each experimenting with different forms, functions, and material properties. These models were used to explore new ways of integrating the bioplastics into building elements such as walls, roofs, and enclosures. By substituting bioplastics for conventional materials, we aimed to demonstrate their potential not only as sustainable alternatives but also as innovative design elements capable of transforming architectural practices.

SCALE MODELS

BUILT APPLICATIONS

ECOLOGY RESEARCH CENTERIN COLLABORATION WITH HANNA LI
Another application of our bioplastics as architectural materials is shown here on a Hanna Li's Ecology Research Center, fit with classroom spaces, and food and ecology lab, and a community garden. Our bioplastic material serves as a working examples of how architectural materials can be ecologically-conscious and environmentally circular.

Spinach dyed bioplastic was lasercut and scored to be utilized as wall cladding on a research center and carrot, turmeric, and beet dyed bioplastic was cast in place in the windows of the community garden.

MODEL IMAGES

NEXT PROJECT

ALYSSA TOHYAMA

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