Building a house is often a life-goal many people wish to fulfil at one point in time. It has been portrayed as an emotional affair in the advertising market quite often, exemplified by the cement ads that have construction of houses bring parents closer to their children; or paints that do not get dull after years of exposure. However, we seldom hear of the environmental damage that is caused during construction process. Conventional construction materials can actually cause air, land, and noise pollution gravely affecting the climate. Though, bio-technology combined with architecture can bring new ways to create spaces that mean the world to us while causing the least disruption to the environment. Kathryn Larsen is one such inventor who uses seaweed, seagrass, and other marine materials in architecture.
Founder of Studio Kathryn Larsen, she is an Msc. Architecture who has done extensive research on usage of marine materials to create a mixture of art and biodesign. Her work specialises in design installations, residential architecture, and commercial interiors, but it is not limited to that. Her venture offers consultancy services, research and design, prototyping and much more. She has collaborated with other biodesign enthusiasts at Studio Kathryn Larsen, that resulted in breakthrough alternatives like shell-waste based concrete mix. Together with Dr. Shannon Hanson, Kathryn is running the experiments to form the first prototype of this biobased concrete at their joint project- ReefCircular.
Painting it Green
The bio-architect has also gathered an ample amount of knowledge about paint blends, especially those that can work with seaweed, as the material is incompatible with water or oil-based paints. She has drawn inspiration from the traditional “mosfarve” paint- one that uses Irish moss seaweed as the glue base and a chalk slurry as the pigment. Studio Kathryn Larsen thereby developed biobased paints of their own that were tinted by pigments from Spira, a microalgae producer from the US. The studio made a mark by utilising their expertise in paint blends made of milk, honey, seaweed glue, microalgae and clay pigments etc. to add a pop of colour to the Sould Acoustic Mats made of seagrass, which was also displayed at Building Green in 2022. Kathryn took her collaboration with Sould a step further by “creating a pin-up board with their product, to show other architects the functional possibility of the material-covered in our microalgae paint.”
Kathryn’s transparent seaweed plastic material has opened new spheres of design; for example, the “Zeeglass Lamp.” This material is coloured using natural pigments from turmeric and microalgae. This bioplastic has also been used to create a selfie wall at UIA World Congress of Architects, and for its fun and beautiful look, the architect envisions it to be a part of a larger structure project. Her thesis project in Delft University of Technology, titled “[Seaweed] farm to Table” has brought laurels to the architect, a testimony to her hardwork, dedication and time spent on formal learning. Recently, the theme for 2023 CHART Art Fair- inclusion- inspired Kathryn to design an accessibility tile, a colourful, easy-to-create, self-locking tile to make movement easier for able-bodied people that find it challenging in the cobblestones. Future prospects of the studio are filled with new projects and innovations like home-compostable safe polymers.
Also read Fish that clean water: WasteShark
