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Urban growth: bio-bricks offer a whiff of the future
newscientist.com ^ | 18:00 25 July 2014 by , | Brendan Byrne

Posted on 07/28/2014 8:44:31 AM PDT by BenLurkin

A sweeping tower made from over 10,000 bio-waste bricks bound with fungal fibre has been growing in the courtyard of MoMA PS1, an offshoot of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Looking like something between a three-headed grain silo, Zhang Huan's Three Legged Buddha and a Berlin flak tower, Hy-Fi is the winner of this year's MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP), and its organic aesthetic clashes hard with the museum's red-brick frontage and the green-glass Citicorp building behind.

This is appropriate. As the brainchild of environmentally conscious architects The Living, Hy-Fi is no corporate monolith or repurposed temple of high culture. Principal architect David Benjamin calls it a "prototype for the architecture of the future". Grown from local agricultural waste with almost no carbon emissions, Hy-Fi is designed to be composted, save for a few beams made of reclaimed wood and steel. (A side exhibit shows the distinct stages of the bricks' decomposition.) Hy-Fi isn't meant to blend with its human surroundings, so much as with the urban ecosystem.

...

Right now, Hy-Fi is an environmentally friendly chill-tent for urban partygoers. But it is possible, as you wander through this loamy, shady space, to catch the scent of a much bigger opportunity.

(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...


TOPICS: Weird Stuff
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To: TangoLimaSierra

The only good thing in that picture — is wearing green shorts.


21 posted on 07/28/2014 11:43:16 AM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: ConservingFreedom

“I laid a bio-waste brick this morning...”

TMI, TMI! LOL!


22 posted on 07/28/2014 11:58:03 AM PDT by MplsSteve
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To: Steven Scharf

“I do not support government funding development of products like this, but I do encourage capitalist to work on these types of innovations.”

Same here.

I appreciate any person who develops a product (yes, even bio-bricks) that helps fill a nice, employs people to produce it and can make a profit off of it.


23 posted on 07/28/2014 12:00:43 PM PDT by MplsSteve
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To: Steven Scharf

The issue is that grain stubble is not garbage. If you remove it from the field, you will have to replace the nutrients that you remove with it. Farmers learned that long ago. So instead of making bricks from topsoil, why not stick with making bricks from clay?

Its not like we are running out of clay.


24 posted on 07/28/2014 12:50:54 PM PDT by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
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To: SampleMan

I was merley pointing out two things, one the bricks the article discusses are not made from bio-waste as intimated by posters and two, that the idea of bricks made from waste products, ie. trash has been around for 40 years.


25 posted on 07/28/2014 8:23:43 PM PDT by Steven Scharf
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