BacTerra

Designing Across Scales

Many animal species have the capacity of forming hard shells which rely on chemical and biological reactions. This serve as a model for how to avoid the intense heat energy required for industrial building materials like concrete and bricks. Cement based concrete production is responsible for 8% of total Co2 emissions per year, meanwhile plankton, mollusks and birds are all capable of fabricating shells through the precipitation of calcium carbonate from their environment efficiently and without hazardous output. Utilizing these species as a source of inspiration this student research focused on leveraging these biological processes to produce bio-mineralization in a mixture that combined clay, a safe and widely available B.Subtilis bacteria, sea urchin shells (a calcium carbonate local resource), and extruded fabrication at the scale of architectural components.