selfgrowingstainglass

The self growing stained glass window was an architectural intervention for the 'Science Fiction' geodesic dome group project.
The Dome was a space for 'worlding', to project our ideas about the future and create some part of the world that we imagined.

As an environmentalist, I am painfully aware of the crises we are headed towards, however for this project I wanted to take a positive, pro-active and hopeful approach, without being in denial of reality.

My piece is exploring the possibility for living infrastruction.
The inner panes are filled with water creating an environment to grow algae, allowing the algae to photosynthesise, exchanging carbon dioxide with oxygen thus sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The reduction of our carbon emissions is an essential step towards saving the planet, but eventually we will also have to look for ways to capture carbon to undo the damage that has already been done.
I became interested in algae as it grows faster (thus captures more carbon) than any terrestrial plant, capturing 1.8kg of carbon for every 1kg of algae grown. I also became fascinated by lichen, a symbiosis of photosynthesising algae and a fungal structure which grows on existing structures, natural and man made and can lives for hundred, and sometimes thousands of years.
The outer panes create a space for a bio-plastic stained glass window. I had been experimenting with making bioplastics from algae. These were lichen inspired. Here I was interested in the capacity of architecture to teach beliefs and create practices, and how the most effective way to sustain a practice or lifestyle is threw a belief system, like a religion. Stained glass has historical been a way to teach the principles of the bible while also evoking the heavens.
The type of 'heaven' I was trying to evoke was one of co-creation with nature - a living infrastructure which grows from the sun and air healing the damage we created in the past while spreading the belief in a positive future.