#HTE

Ikea/Space 10 Demonstrate How a Miracle Crop Can be Integrated Into Architecture

Imagine living millennia ago, in a time when you’ve never seen a horse. Everywhere you and your tribe go is by walking. Then one of you discovers horses and figures out how to ride one. Now you’ve discovered the perfect sustainable transportation system. 

Horses eat grass, which is free. That fuel gives them the energy to carry you a helluva lot further than if you were walking. Eventually they poop, and their poop fertilizes the ground, which then grows more grass. It’s a circular system, and now you and your tribe have vastly extended your range.

While horses are no longer a viable transportation source, we need to continue discovering circular systems in order for our ever-increasing population to sustain itself. A horse’s fuel, grass, was both abundant and largely worthless to us, but by eating it they provided us with something useful in the form of long-range transportation. In essence, we got something for nothing.

Something else that’s both abundant and useless to us is carbon dioxide. CO2 is not only useless, it’s a problem. But carbon dioxide is very useful to microscopic algae, who need it to grow and do their handy photosynthesis thing where they give us free fresh oxygen. (Algae produces about 75% of Earth’s oxygen.)

And there’s another bonus to microalgae: There are edible varieties, like Spirulina, which are nutrient-rich and contain 60% protein. (Beef contains about 25% protein, for scale.) We can eat it for fuel. And Spirulina is a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids. It can also be used to feed livestock, which again provides us with fuel, albeit with an extra step.

[Infomercial voice] But wait, there’s more!

Microalgae is fast-growing, with some variants able to double their volume in just six hours. Microalgae can be grown in non-potable water and in soil that’s too barren for us to farm.

Let’s re-cap:

Microalgae Pluses

- Requires little (CO2, sunlight, water) to grow
- Provides free oxygen
- Edible, nutrient- and protein-rich
- Fast-growing

Microalgae Minuses

- It’s green, and some people don’t like the color green

To promote the benefits of microalgae, Ikea’s Space10 think tank/skunkworks developed the Algae Dome. Created by bio-engineer Keenan Pinto and architects Aleksander Wadas, Rafal Wroblewski and Anna Stempniewicz, the Algae Dome, a finalist for the CHART Architecture design competition held in Copenhagen this month, shows how a microalgae-growing apparatus can be integrated into architecture. Here’s how it works: