Hvillum began exploring alternative uses for seaweed during a research stay at Noma, Denmark’s most famous restaurant, where the plant is prized as an ingredient.
She cites a low-carbon manufacturing process and 100 percent biodegradability as two additional major advantages of her new blinds. She hopes that one day a group of design firms will research special seaweeds along the windswept Scandinavian beaches.
Hvillum curtains are made from a fabric called Alger—basically, reshaped seagrass. Rita Trinidad
But what will consumers of dog pack do?
“People need to warm up to use the new materials,” Havilum argues. “When we look at wood, we understand and trust it, even if we don’t know exactly what kind we are looking for. With a material as completely new as Algeria, we lack that understanding.”
She believes this is one of the reasons we continue to use all kinds of carbon-intensive materials in construction and in our homes.
Concrete, for example, requires huge amounts of energy to produce, and the final product cannot be easily recycled. But the high-performance, low-carbon alternatives have not yet found wide acceptance, despite being in a late stage of development.
At ETH University in Zurich, researchers are using mineral foam to make a concrete alternative that contains 70 percent less raw material than is usual.
And in London, design studio Newtab-22 is working to turn waste shells from the seafood industry into high-performance “stone”.
But neither product has yet been licensed by the company to be manufactured on a large scale.
South African architect Xavier Huyberechts says there is a limit to how much innovation the construction sector can take on when making significant investments.
Imaginative homeowners are more likely to push the use of sustainable materials, rather than industry, says South African architect Xavier Huyberechts.
My job is in Johannesburg [GLH Architects]known as corporate buildings, and we made our name 20 years ago by introducing more sustainable elements into that space,” he says. “But for years now, and to my great disappointment, we haven’t been able to push the corporate world much further.”
Huyberechts believes that new sustainable materials will take root in the residential sector first, where motivated homeowners can act independently of councils and shareholders.
To prove what’s possible, he recently built an off-grid vacation home in the arid Free State with his brother, who is also an architect.
Eco house built from local materials by Xavier Huyberechts and his brother in Witklipfontein, South Africa.
The siblings balanced familiar environmental features (solar panels, a water treatment facility) with an age-old challenge: building the house using little more than the raw materials around them.
“We looked at technologies that have been very successful over centuries, but are no longer in the favor of post-industrialisation,” he says.
The inner walls of the house were built with compacted earthen bricks. The outer walls are either rammed from the ground or stone. There is also a central chamber covered by a dome that was built with sandbags filled with earth.
“Sandbags are fast, economical, and very robust,” Huyberechts says.
When made using modern equipment, traditional earthen bricks and rock earthen walls are also surprisingly strong.
Cozy corner inside the earthen house. This room was built from sandbags.
Best of all, Huyberechts says, is the homely feel of the place. “Aesthetically, it is beautiful because the site is earth sourced. There is a perfect integration between the house and the reddish environment around it.”
Could using old school technologies and materials before us be the answer to the construction industry’s carbon problem? Huyberechts isn’t alone in thinking about it.
In Ecuador, chocolate manufacturer Muze is funding a village for its workers made largely from 3D-printed cocoa waste. Construction begins late this year.
A view of the Cacao Eco Village in Ecuador designed for chocolate manufacturer Muze by Valentino Gareri.
The Sydney-based architect who is leading the project, Valentino Garriere, describes it as “poetic as well as practical”.
“Few people know that 80 percent of the cocoa fruit is wasted when making chocolate,” Jarrye says. “Here, we take the bulk of the fruit and combine it with some resin and make a material that can withstand earthquakes.”
Sydney-based architect Valentino Jarrieri says the new materials are the next step in global architecture.
Gareri admits that the buildings won’t be made entirely of cocoa — there will also be wooden skeletons to hold the panels in place. But he thinks the project deserves to be taken seriously, not least because it’s redefining 3D printing, which usually involves plastic.
The Italian-born engineer’s resume is definitely solid. “I first moved to Sydney in 2014 when I was working for Renzo Piano at Barangaro Towers,” he says.
Then I spent some time in New York with [Danish architect] Bjarke Engels, but I’ve been back to Australia a lot. When the pandemic hit, I decided to stay and create my own company.”
In addition to the Cocoa project, Valentino Gareri Atelier is designing several housing developments in Australia, including the so-called “Spiral Village” in Bellingen, on the north-central coast of New South Wales.
The village of 200 people, which is also set to begin construction late this year, features a nautilus-style design and farmhouse that Jareri says will make it nearly carbon-neutral.
He’s shy about the materials his team uses, although he says 3D printing will be involved.
“It is the new materials that will propel global architecture forward,” he says. “There is no doubt in my mind.”
