AWARD YEAR
2021
CATEGORY
Work
GOALS
Sustainable Cities & Communities
KEYWORDS
Bricks , sustainable building , Building materials, Construction, sustainable cities
COUNTRY
United States of America
DESIGNED BY
University of Colorado
WEBSITE
https://www.fastcompany.com/90455726/these-darpa-funded-bricks-can-self-repair-and-replicate
Living Brick Materials
Growing bricks out of bacteria and sand
Researchers at the University of Colorado, operating under a grant from DARPA, have demonstrated a new methodology to grow bricks out of bacteria and sand. The technique uses cyanobacteria in a process that doesn’t sound all that different from mixing a yeast starter with flour to make bread.
Scientists created a mix of sand and hydrogel (which is basically a special, goopy plastic that’s 90% water). Then they added the bacteria Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002, which is a particularly fast-growing, well-researched strain of cyanobacteria. Over the course of 24 hours, the bacteria produced rigid calcium (biology’s original hard stuff found in bones and shells), which bound the gel into a solid material.
The researchers say all of this can be done in a scaffold the size of a shoe box to produce a self-curing brick.