We’re running out of all of our energy sources. Four hundred trees are burned to make 25,000 bricks. It’s a consumption issue, and honestly, it’s starting to scare me.” ~Ginger Krieg Dosier, 2010′s Next Generation Design Competition winner
The 32 year old Dosier is an American architect in Abu Dhabi who won an innovative design prize for her “green” bricks. These bricks are made with sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride and urea (a compound found in urine) in a process called microbial-induced calcite precipitation. The bacteria is non-pathogenic, no heat is used just mixing and what’s greener than reusing what’s in urine?
How is it made? According to greenbiz.com: “Sand is blended with a growth media consisting of non-pathogenic bacteria (sporosar), yeast extract, calcium chloride and water. The bacteria induce calcite precipitation in the sand and the result is a brick with properties similar to sandstone.”
The process and Dosier’s discovery process is detailed at metropolismag.com and makes for an interesting read.
Not only does this small scale product have the potential to make big differences in CO2 emissions and our world but her thought behind it is impressive.
I wanted to show,” she says, “that architecture can do more than just exist.”
According to metropolismag.com:
Just before graduate school, Dosier threw away her worldly possessions—her clothes, her typewriting tables, her precious antique glassware. In retrospect, it’s when much of her thinking about materials in design took shape.
“I was questioning this idea of ownership, and I got really interested in chemical processes, researching what materials are made of, what you can add to them to change how they grow and die,” she says. Soon, she was building furniture out of salt and calcium carbonate (a compound found in shells), then watching it evaporate in the forest like an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture.
Her master’s thesis, a salt-composite handrail, cleaned germs off anyone who touched it, before wearing away to a flimsy scaffold.
Dosier isn’t the first to make green bricks and you can read about those other innovations at greenbiz.com
One of the competitions judges was Joel Makower, one of my Top 5 White People Worth Interrupting Black History Month For -also an interesting read but mostly videos.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
