3D-printed aquatic reefs made from cremated remains
Spotted: What if, instead of scattering your loved ones’ ashes into the ocean, you could give them a more permanent resting place that would also help regenerate marine ecosystems?
This is the idea behind Resting Reefs, a system of 3D-printed artificial reefs designed to be made from cremated remains. The project was developed by Louise Lenborg Skajem and Aura Elena Murillo Pérez, graduates of the Royal College of Art in London.
The Reefs are designed to provide a habitat for marine life, helping to restore biodiversity in areas where natural coral reefs have been destroyed. According to the developers, each reef can support up to 16 different species of marine life.
To test their design, the team used animal bones and pulverized oyster shells—in place of human remains—to make a composite that may be 3D-printed into stippled mounds. The mounds resemble the form and natural growth pattern of stromatolite reefs, which are made up of microorganisms like blue-green algae.
Forming cremated ashes into solid reef mounds also provides surviving family members with a permanent place to pay respects to their loved ones.
The reefs are intended to be placed in shallow waters near the shore – where they can provide a home for small fish and other creatures. Eventually, the developers hope to create a version of the reef that can be used in deeper waters.
The Reefs are designed to provide a habitat for marine life, helping to restore biodiversity in areas where natural coral reefs have been destroyed. According to the developers, each reef can support up to 16 different species of marine life.
Other reef-related innovations spotted by Springwise include underwater ‘coral cities’ that revive marine life, ‘coral IVF’ used to re-populate damaged reefs, and bacteria that protect reefs from heat stress.
Written By: Katrina Lane
21st April 2022
Website: restingreef.co.uk
Contact: restingreef.co.uk/contact
Compared to its successful contemporaries, the refurbishments of Cumbernauld Town Centre were not critical enough for it to catch up with nowadays standards, either functionally or aesthetically. As one of a few megastructures ever built, is there a historical argument to be made for restoring this rare building? After all, the Cumbernauld Town Centre represents more than just brutalist aesthetics; it is a concrete implementation of innovative urban design concepts from the post-war period. (This is not to mention the environmental argument: it is a waste to demolish the massive concrete structure, which consumed a considerable amount of resources to build. One can only hope that it will be recycled into secondary materials.)
“Depicted in this image is my hometown Wuppertal. The world famous Schwebebahn, which was build over one hundred years ago as a result of advancements in steel production and metal fabrication, still remains to awe visitors when it meanders through narrow streets above the river Wupper. Shown here is a speculative redesign of the city in the spirit of the early Schwebebahn designs and its historic “Kaiserwagen”.
“Memories and dreams sometimes go hand in hand. The combination of reality and fantasy is an intrinsic force that supplies the creative portfolio of an artistic mind with endless possibilities. Nevertheless, even with all the infinite pieces put together sometimes one can’t help but look into triggers of certain spaces that take you back into specific moments of life. This particular studio is a combination of said moments in time; clutter in respective areas, materiality, scale, objects and the conglomeration of mechanical pieces grounds the imagery, which brings a sense of character that many people resonate with. It’s a sense of remembering a space that does not exist. A remembrance.”
“On December 21, 1848, a white plantation owner, traveling with his enslaved servant, passed through the Central of Georgia Railroad terminal in Savannah, seeking medical care in Boston.
“The First Settlement on Mars.
“Located near a highway between two major cities in the north of Mexico, Monterrey and Saltillo, the site generates from the hillside of the mountain chain. A ring with an inner radius of 47m, a section of 18m and an outer radius of 65m. Embedded in the ground giving the appearance of rising or detaching from it. The intention of the project is to guide the farewell process of a loved one through the natural and architectural environment. HALO Funeral Center stands out for its morphology and relationship with the context that generates a farewell process for both the bereaved and the deceased. In this way achieving a liberation and a healthy duel.”
“People is what gives architecture life. With all their different lights and colors, they make the spaces alive. When designing a façade, a lot of effort is put into the relation with the exterior environment. With this rendering I wanted to focus on the role that the interior spaces play in a façade. Each of these windows have a story to tell, a feeling to show, a thought going on.
“A boundless generative study for a spatial understanding of an infinite archive dedicated to letters and stamps in the context of Campo Marzio. Inspired by “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borgestry, the drawing tries to incorporate the idea of sauntering and browsing through ramps. It explores the layers beneath the Campo Marzio in relation to the accumulation of historical letters and records. This is a result of moving upward and downward into the layers of Campo Marzio imagined by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720- 1778).”
“Overlooking the sky, the water,the mountains and the small houses, they form a long picture that is deeply touching. The combination of a long time and strong strength reveals a solemn scene and makes people linger and forget to return. I suddenly had a strong desire and shouted at the mountain opposite. Bursts of pleasant echoes reverberated in my young heart, and my heart suddenly gushed a kind of magnanimity I had never had before. I felt that I had melted into the mountain.”
“The illustration explores a future in which architectural forms grasp to reach beyond Earth’s gravity. Density and population lead some to choose a nomadic life-style, free to roam the open plains below…”
“What are memories if not frozen fragments of time?
“Faced with the cruel reality everybody witnessed on TV in 2021, we were moved and felt responsible to act.
“Churches are sacred spaces where people unite spiritually with a higher power. We enter churches when faced by pure and meaningful emotions like true love. Churches are therefore unique types of architecture where humans can express their deepest feelings through prayers influencing their psychology, philosophy and lifestyle. Love at first sight usually culminates in a church during the wedding ceremony.
“The sun is warming the air as the market is closing now. My shirt is already sticking to my skin. They advised to avoid going out, but I feel good, I’m only coughing. Uncle Alisha is saying he got sick because it’s not air anymore, he says that before we used to see the sky and it was blue. But I don’t know; maybe he’s just getting old, he’s already 37. The Stack is constantly growing as new people are moving in. Are they coming from Above?”
“Cheese factory. A place that is sure to please guests, especially fans of healthy eating preservation of national traditions, local cuisine. The landscapes there are also quite beautiful – the peaks of the Carpathians are clearly visible. Shepherds work here from spring to autumn. During this time, many sheep can be seen on the slopes. Various cheeses, Budz, Bryndza, Vurda are prepared on the fire. You can see with your own eyes a difficult but pleasant process, the preparation of Hutsul cheeses.
“I dreamed of a circle room with countless thin arkd who fall in the center. At first, I tried to make a subtile natural light like a overcast sky. I worked shaders of walls and arks with dressed stone for remind stuctures like abbayes and churchs. After that I really wanted to make a old dark wood floor with a lot of wear but in the same time I want to make it elegant with strong reflections. I choose a dark Floor because this helped me contrast the image, the room is globally dark except for the center of the image. I placed a tree with a soft shape to stay close to the arks shape. After that I added few artificial lights with warm color to have more reflections on the floor. I tried to make a place which is perceived like sacred and silent.”
“My story depicts a dystopia that is mostly driven by the cold and insensitive brutalism of Orwell’s 1984 novel and the post-soviet era in Middle-Eastern Europe. These types of buildings are called “panel houses” in Hungary, which means houses made of reinforced concrete blocks. Most of these were built right after World War II, when suddenly many people had to be accommodated.
“Day 1947
“This is the story of an old industrial building with a new form of life. One idea was popping in my mind to take the most industrial function and to make it not only a practical source of energy, but also architecturally and publicly friendly. Looking over different dams around the world I realized that’s the perfect ground for the imagination. Brutalist aesthetics, and the almost military look of the dams, made me overthink their use.
“Growing up in urban South-East Asia, I’ve found there’s nothing in comparison to the chaotically beautiful sensory overload.
“The project is an anti-surveillance monastery in the mountains of China named the ‘Blind Spot’. Located more specifically in Fengdu ghost city, Chongqing, the Blind Spot is a retreat/sanctuary where you can escape the pressures of a heavily surveilled society. It is temporary living off the grid and houses sleeping chambers, meditation rooms, learning centres, and is influenced by the design of Buddhist monasteries.
“Saigon has evolved from the ’70s-nowhere else in Vietnam can one experience the quickly changing cultural and economic shift that takes place before our eyes. The 10+ million inhabitants seem to be constantly moving…Locals and foreigners, looks, sounds, smells, tastes all mix, and create something so eclectic and excitingly new that is impossible to capture in words. The city’s constantly buzzing. Moving. People yearn to break the shackles of the past, the shackles of society’s expectations. Poverty, traditional values, and collectivism are quickly shifting to consumerism and individualism.
“We heard the thump of music. A door swung open, LED lights bleeding into the night. The space was packed but it felt familiar, like being reunited for the first time with people you didn’t really know. Some whose first names you know but whose numbers are not in your phone. You have no idea what they do for a living, or where they are from, or how old they are. You see them on the dance floor, where you have been hanging out for years.
“City life can be vibrant, diverse, and dynamic. But it can also be crowded, polluted, and noisy; It is overstimulating which can make people feel stressed and overwhelmed. So the question is what’s the antidote to modern life stress? That is why we in the DD Studio decided to design a cabin in the woods in our style with minimum interference with nature as a building and maximum view. In this image, we are trying to show the communication between nature and humans and how the cabin sits in context.”
“Along the Passaic River from Port Newark through Jersey Turnpike, air pollution caused by toxic factories and transportation leads to increased health concerns and affects families’ health and vulnerable communities in Newark and the entire New York Metropolitan area.
“In 2012, Japanese architect Katsuhiro Miyamoto made the extraordinary proposition to erect giant Shrine-style roofs over the ruined reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after the 2011 nuclear disaster. The conceptual idea of using the roofs to signify the presence of a powerful force on site extends to a workable proposition, based on the Japanese culture where shrines are rebuilt every 20 years to ensure that traditional building techniques are passed on generations. Likewise, the upkeep of the reactors’ decommissioning will extend in centuries, therefore the construction of these roofs is chosen as a form of preservation, to transmit the knowledge of Nuclear Waste management to future generations.
