Shell we Dance?

‘Shell we dance?’ transforms the high volume of waste from the consumption of eggs and shellfish into a biomaterial which is harvested, processed and fabricated within the city into a new component-based building system. The project evolved through a collaboration with mathematicians and material engineers, and developed moldable components and a complimentary adhesive which were tested at multiple scales.The architecture students from the California College of the Arts, working in partnership with cellular biology graduate students at the University of California, San Francisco, looked at the chemical and biological structure of the material, exploring variable formulations and developing ways to enhance the structural capacity with the addition of living bacteria. These new assemblies formed the basis for investigating future design applications.