BioDesign Research Featured on ABC7 News

ABC7 News recently featured work by students at CCA and UCSF [LINK HERE] The award-winning project, "Shell We Dance?", explores innovative solutions for transforming egg and shellfish waste into sustainable building materials. The project team, led by CCA professors Margaret Ikeda, Evan Jones, and Negar Kalantar, and with UCSF professor Dyche Mullins, worked at Autodesk's Pier 9 Technology Center through an Academic Alliance.

The project tackles the pressing issue of construction waste and carbon emissions by drawing inspiration from natural shell structures. By developing moldable components and a complementary adhesive, the team created a new building system that incorporates living bacteria to enhance structural capacity. This sustainable approach aligns with the vision of reducing the environmental impact of the construction industry.

CCA Students: Miti Mehta, Negar Hosseini, Kianoush Hamedi, Jesus Guillermo Macias Franco
Project Leads: Margaret Ikeda, Evan Jones, Dr. Negar Kalantar, Dr. Dyche Mullins
UCSF Students: Alex Hong, Claire Kokontis, Camille Moore
Advisors: Ali Farajmandi, Dr. Anastasia H. Muliana, Dr.Alain Goriely, Dr. Gabor Domokos

BioDesign Research Featured on ABC7 News

ABC7 News recently featured work by students in Margaret Ikeda’s Fall 2021 Constructed Ecologies course, in which students developed concepts for artificial habitats made from natural materials. The feature showcased the recent installation of a prototype for a bird habitat, fabricated from local acacia and willow branches, at San Francisco’s Presidio, where the Architecture Ecologies Lab has an ongoing partnership. The story featured interviews with Prof. Ikeda and student Geada Alagha (M.Arch 2022).

Link: “Student-led biodesign architecture project adds habitats to SF's Presidio”

Presidio Reef Research Featured on ABC7 News

The Presidio Culvert Reef project was recently featured in a story on ABC7 News, by Spencer Christian and Tim Didion. AEL directors Margaret Ikeda and Evan Jones were interviewed on site for the story, discussing how the AEL’s work designing and fabricating ecological substrates is contributing to oyster habitat restoration in the Presidio’s Crissy Marsh.

Link: “Combining infrastructure and ecology: Oysters find new home in SF’s Presidio tidal marsh”

AEL Partners with Presidio Trust on Native Oyster Habitat Restoration

AEL directors Evan Jones and Margaret Ikeda have been working for the past year with the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service on innovative ecological substrates for native oyster habitat restoration at the newly expanded wetlands at Quartermaster Reach / Crissy Marsh. The team includes research fellow and CCA M.Arch alum Sean Cunningham, the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Kreysler & Associates, and support from Autodesk’s Technology Center, San Francisco.

This past year, the team has deployed a series of floating substrate prototypes to test ways to recruit Olympia oyster larvae and encourage their growth in the marsh. This work has informed the design of larger scale, custom-contoured composite panels, which will be installed later this summer as a permanent liners for new culverts that run beneath Mason Street.

For more information on the project, see this news post from the Presidio’s blog.

Architectural Ecologies Lab Team Leads Research Trip to the Maldives

Interdisciplinary Cohort Explores Radical Alternatives through Field Work and Public Engagement.

What better way to spend an ecological summer break than investigating the effects of climate change in the highly impacted Maldives? An interdisciplinary team from the Architectural Ecologies Lab did just that. This past July, three California College of the Arts faculty from the Architectural Ecologies Lab joined two scientists for a two-week field trip to the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean of 1,200 small coral islands, 200 of which are are human-inhabited.

The Maldives face immediate and urgent impacts of sea-level rise caused by climate change, including disastrous, recent coral bleaching due to ocean warming. CCA faculty Margaret Ikeda, Evan Jones, and Leslie Carol Roberts joined Dr. John Oliver of the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the biologist Jo Guerrero on a visit to numerous islands, conducting field work and sharing research and design work by California College of the Arts faculty and students interrogating ecological changes and how we might mediate the effects through varied approaches.

Professors Ikeda and Jones lead the Buoyant Ecologies Maldives integrated architecture studio, which began work in 2017 to develop speculative proposals for floating communities in the Maldives. Professor Roberts co-directs the Ecopoesis Project, an interdisciplinary initiative of the AEL and CCA’s MFA in Writing Program, exploring how we use language to grasp and process life, human and non-human, in the sixth extinction. 

The team’s research brief included field work and interviews to better map and understand the complex island culture, politics, economies, infrastructure, and marine ecology. The team left with optimism about future collaborations and strategies for partnerships this fall semester and beyond.

Highlights:

  • An evening lecture and panel discussion at The Maldives National University (MNU) with more than 150 attendees, including former president and climate activist President Mohamed Nasheed; Dr. Mohamed Latheef, the Chancellor of MNU, and Dr. Shazla Mohamed, Dean of Engineering, Science and Technology (home of the architecture department). 

  • Professors Ikeda and Jones were invited guest reviewers at MNU for the final studio presentation for a fourth-year undergraduate studio, which explored the planning and development of a community over water.

  • A two-day exhibition in Male’ (the capital city) of Buoyant Ecologies Maldives studio work, followed the talks. This work had previously been exhibited at the Hubbell Gallery at CCA in February, 2019 (curated by CCA faculty member Michael Bogan) and at the Benthic Lab Open House in April, 2019. This event was an opportunity to meet with the public and discuss the studio projects on exhibit. Many people attended, including representatives from government agencies who were curious about both the adaptive design approaches and the incorporation of sustainable systems. These initial meetings have cultivated relationships with a new constituency who have become an essential resource for this fall’s Buoyant Ecologies Maldives studio, currently underway at CCA.

  • Professor Roberts led a series of Ecopoesis dialogues with Maldivian students and visitors to the exhibition, interviewing them and discussing local perspectives on how climate change impacts economic, social, and ecological dimensions of daily life.

  • The island of Dhangethi, the site of the Buoyant Ecologies Maldives studio, was the main focal point of the trip. After a three-hour speed boat trip in heavy monsoon seas, the team spent three days meeting with island residents, learning about the local infrastructure, understanding the island’s hydrology, and recording thoughts on climate. Most of their time was spent on the water, including snorkelling with the majestic whale shark, observing the marine eco-tourism industry, and talking to local divers. The biologists, both divers, explored an adjacent marine sanctuary, and documented the shallow and deep lagoons that skirt the island of Dhangethi. Dhangethi, with a population of 500, is looking to grow its tourist economy. The implications of a heavier human footprint on water use and effluent were explored and discussed with local leaders. 

  • To better understand the Maldives economy, which is based on high-end, foreign-funded resorts and tourism, the team visited the Conrad (Hilton) Resort, home to a famed underwater restaurant and representative of the industry.  The Conrad biologists explained the hotel’s coral restoration scheme and took the AEL into the waters for a closer view.. The next stop was the Banyan Tree Resort, a global hotel group based in Singapore. Banyan Tree has a reputation for serious commitment to marine biology research. Their resident marine biologist, Steve Newman, has more than two decades of dive work and research around coral and marine life in the Maldives. In addition, he is on a government panel that looks at how to better manage eco-tourism across the country. Connected to a research university in the UK, the Banyan Tree routinely hosts PhD students conducting research about the local ecologies. The hotel is also one of the only marine biology labs in the country. The AEL team saw documented extensive coral bleaching on this warmer inner island atoll and observed how sharks and other reef species were adapting. Oliver continues discussions with the biologist at Banyan Tree lab about possible research collaborations in the coming years.

Isha Fathmath, a 2018 Buoyant Ecologies Maldives student, 2019 CCA M.Arch graduate, and principal of Doric MV architecture based in the capital Male’ with local partner Layana Mohamed, coordinated all the public events and was invaluable to navigating the islands from a local perspective.

There is more to come with both ECOPOESIS and the Buoyant Ecologies team. Roberts and her CCA ECOPOESIS colleague Christopher Falliers are teaching a semester-long graduate seminar ECOPOESIS. This interdisciplinary course looks at embodied messaging around climate change, engaging in form-making and language to articulate climate change and the feelings of the sixth extinction. The Buoyant Ecologies team is incorporating the feedback of all their new partners into a third design studio, titled “A Blueprint for Resilience,” and has been working remotely with an MNU architecture studio sharing ideas around innovative technologies, cultural traditions and ecological adaptations.