RCA students develop underwater urns that double as oyster reefs

Graduates from London's Royal College of Art have developed a way to form Resting Reefs from cremated ashes in a bid to provide a "meaningful funeral service" that regenerates endangered ecosystems.

Created by students Louise Lenborg Skajem and Aura Elena Murillo Pérez, the process involves creating individual urns or "oyster capsules" from the ashes of the deceased.

The ashes were mixed with a binder and crushed oyster shells discarded by restaurants to create a composite that was 3D printed into organically-shaped mounds.

The Resting Reef urns contain bone ash

The pods mimic the form and natural growth process of ancient stromatolite reefs to offer ideal growing conditions for oysters on their ridged surface.

The individual capsules can be combined to create entire artificial reefs-cum-cemeteries to bolster natural oyster reef numbers, which have dwindled by 85 per cent due to human activities and are now on the brink of extinction.

Although Lenborg Skajem and Murillo Pérezthe have yet to test their prototypes in real marine environments, the students believe that their Resting Reefs could function much like natural oyster reefs to prevent erosion, protect shorelines from storms and regenerate biodiversity by creating a habitat for oysters and other sea life.

They can be coloured using natural pigments

Unlike contemporary funeral practices, which have an outsized environmental impact, the ultimate aim is to create a burial method that actively regenerates marine ecosystems and foster an emotional investment in their continued protection.

"Resting Reef is not only aiming to reduce negative impacts but to generate positive ones," Murillo Pérez told Dezeen. "We do this by creating reef structures that nourish and accommodate marine growth while giving people a meaningful funeral service."

"We are designing new rituals and ways of remembrance that enable deeper connections with ourselves, our deceased loved ones and the marine environment."

Lenborg Skajem and Murillo Pérez experimented with various material formulations

Traditional burials require vast amounts of land, embalming chemicals and emissions-intensive materials like steel and concrete, while cremation releases 400 kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere for everybody burned.

Resting Reefs, on the other hand, are based on a burgeoning practice called water cremation, which sees a body placed in a steel chamber filled with hot water and a strong alkaline chemical such as potassium hydroxide.

Over the course of around four hours, this effectively dissolves all of the body's tissues and leaves behind only the bones.

The pods can be moulded or 3D printed

These are subsequently dried in an oven and reduced to bone ash, in a process that uses five times less energy than cremation and reduces emissions by 35 per cent.

As the students did not have access to actual human remains to create their prototypes, they instead worked with animal bones combined with pulverised oyster shells.

"Oysters prefer settling onto hard surfaces, especially calcium carbonate which their own shells are made of," Lenborg Skajem said. "We are still developing and testing our formula, but it will contain a binder like a low-carbon cement suitable for marine environments."

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This mixture can be cast or 3D-printed into customisable reef structures modelled on stromatolites – limestone reefs formed by the growth of blue-green algae that are considered some of the earliest examples of life on earth.

"The way they grow is in layers, which is very similar to how oyster shells grow," Lenborg Skajem said. "We are using 3D printers to biomimic similar layers and ridges that are ideal for small marine organisms to attach to."

Lenborg Skajem and Murillo Pérez are developing a number of prototype capsules with different material compositions as part of being shortlisted for the Terra Carta Design Lab competition organised by Prince Charles and Jony Ive.

They are made with pulverised oyster shells

Once their design is finalised, the idea is that Resting Reefs would be installed and maintained in collaboration with existing reef restoration programmes.

"We aim to have beautiful sites where people connect with nature and can visit their loved ones," Murillo Pérez said. "The sites will also be available for local people that wish to visit and learn more about how the reef is serving their coast."

The pods could be used to form entire reefs-cum-cemeteries

The artificial reefs could even act as "blue carbon" sinks, in which atmospheric CO2 is drawn down and sequestered in marine and coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and salt marshes.

But this would be highly dependent on the location of the reefs and the exact footprint of the low-carbon concrete used in their production.

Resting Reefs could act as a place of both mourning and education

A number of other companies, such as Florida-based Eternal Reefs and Solace Reefs in the UK, have created similar underwater burial services that see ashes integrated into perforated concrete domes called "reef balls".

But these are generally more emissions-intensive as they are made using traditional concrete and human ashes derived from incineration.

On land, designers have reimagined burial methods to be more sustainable by creating seed-filled urns that grow into trees and coffins that use fungus to quickly degrade bodies while fertilising the surrounding soil.

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Dotplot device monitors changes in breast health

Postgraduate students at the Royal College of Art have created a portable tool to help women check their breasts for abnormalities.

The handheld device, called Dotplot, is a breast health monitoring tool that uses sensing technology – a technology that uses sensors to acquire information by detecting the physical, chemical, or biological property quantities and convert them into readable signal – to build a map of the user's chest and take readings of their breast tissue.

Dotplot is a breast monitoring device

Dotplot is programmed to identify different areas around the breast in order to map the reading to a specific point, meaning that any changes in tissue density can easily be detected.

When used over a period of several months, it's able to provide month-by-month comparisons of breast tissue, helping to flag abnormalities as soon as possible. The long-term goal is to help more women detect potential breast cancer earlier.

It uses sensing technology to create a map of the user's breasts

"Our goal at Dotplot is to eliminate the confusion and misconceptions surrounding self-checks," Royal College of Arts (RCA) students Debra Babalola, Shefali Bohra, Himari Tamamura and Yukun Ge told Dezeen.

"We want women to take care of their breast health with confidence, clarity and ease," they continued.

The device can be connected to an app that guides users as they check their breasts

Women can connect the Dotplot device to an app via Bluetooth and while pressing the device to their chest, they can read a step-by-step guide on how to check each area of their breasts.

Instructions include prompting women to follow the on-screen marker to move the device across the chest to cover the entire chest.

The app provides real-time feedback and at the end of each check, it creates a report which can be compared to statistics gathered from previous months. It also reminds users to conduct a check each month.

The tool builds a map of the user's chest and takes readings of their breast tissue

The first phase of developing the device prototype involved asking a group of women of different ages how regularly and in what ways they check their breasts.

The students found that many women are confused or even scared of conducting breast self-checks, despite it being a key method in helping to detect breast cancer in its early stages. This feedback informed the final design.

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"We were surprised to hear that women who had been shown how to conduct self-checks by their general practitioners were still not 100 per cent sure that they were doing them correctly," said the designers.

"Others worry that the moment a lump is found, death is certain and this has deterred women from checking their breasts as regularly as they should, in fear of feeling a lump or abnormality."

"It highlighted that the demonstrations, pamphlets and tutorials provided for breast health care – though useful – were insufficient," they continued.

It comes in a choice of colours

The students hope that Dotplot will help prevent more cancer diagnoses while encouraging women to make a habit of checking their breasts.

"We aim to make breast health care routine and demonstrate that discovering changes in your breast tissue is not something to be feared – especially when detected in good time," they said.

"We then asked ourselves, how can we ensure that women perform these checks correctly in order to reduce the number of deaths per incidence of breast cancer?" they added.

"The good news is that early detection increases survival rates to 93 per cent, so when caught on time the prognosis is significantly improved."

The students hope that it helps more women detect cancers earlier

Babalola, Bohra, Tamamura and Ge developed Dotplot as part of studies on Innovation Design Engineering, a course run by RCA and Imperial College London.

Past designs by students at the RCA include Nat Martin's Scroll ring which enables wearers to interact with augmented reality and Brian Black's virtual-reality proposal that would give people the opportunity to drive NASA's rovers in space.

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Carbon-capturing Celour paint allows anyone to "participate in CO2 removal in their daily lives"

Design graduate Kukbong Kim has developed a paint made from demolished concrete that is capable of absorbing 20 per cent of its weight in carbon.

Called Celour, the paint can sequester 27 grams of CO2 for every 135 grams of paint used.

"That is the same amount of carbon dioxide that a normal tree absorbs per day," Kim said.

The indoor-outdoor paint is made of waste concrete powder, a cement-based residue from concrete recycling that is normally buried in landfills, where it can alkalise the soil and have a detrimental effect on local ecosystems.

Celour is a carbon-capturing paint that comes in three colours

Through a chemical process called mineral carbonation, which takes place when the paint reacts with the CO2 in the surrounding air, Kim says Celour can reabsorb a significant part of the emissions that were generated by producing the cement in the first place.

Eventually, she hopes to optimise the capturing capacity of the paint so that it completely negates the carbon footprint of the cement it is made from.

"I think it is too early to describe Celour as carbon neutral," Kim said. "It needs further study but I want to make it a carbon-negative product. That is my goal."

"It's not enough if we just stop emissions, as we already have high levels of CO2 in the air," she added. "We need to participate in CO2 removal in our daily lives."

Concrete naturally reabsorbs some of the carbon it emits

Cement is the most carbon-intensive ingredient in concrete and is responsible for eight per cent of global emissions.

But when concrete is recycled, only the aggregate is reused while the cement binder is pulverised to create waste concrete powder and sent to landfill, where it can disturb the pH balance of the surrounding soil.

"Waste concrete powder is high in calcium oxide," Kim explained. "And when it is buried and comes into contact with groundwater or water in the soil, it turns into calcium hydroxide, which is strongly alkaline."

The waste concrete powder is filtered, pulverised and mixed with a binder, water and pigments

With her graduate project from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, the designer hopes to show the usefulness of this industrial waste material by maximising its natural ability to capture carbon.

Studies have shown that cement already reabsorbs around 43 per cent of the CO2 that is generated in its production through the mineral carbonation process.

This is set off when concrete is cured by adding water, which reacts with the calcium oxide in the cement and the CO2 in the air to form a stable mineral called calcium carbonate or limestone.

A traditional concrete block continues to cure throughout its life but because this process is reliant on exposure to air, only its outer layers will react with the CO2 while its core will remain uncarbonated.

Celour could store carbon for thousands of years

But Kim was able to improve the material's carbon-capturing capabilities by turning the waste concrete pounder into a paint, mixed with a binder, water and pigments.

This is spread thinly on a surface so that more of the material is exposed to the air and can carbonate.

In addition, the coarse powder was further filtered and pulverised to increase the relative surface area of the particles while a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) binder creates small gaps for air to enter.

"I have done a lot of experiments with different ingredients to maximise carbon absorption by increasing the surface area that comes into contact with carbon dioxide in the air," she explained.

"Graphene, which can capture lots of carbon thanks to its structure, was also considered as a binder but excluded because it is currently priced high and cannot be mass-produced."

The paint can be used both indoors and outdoors

Cement has long been used to create traditional paint, which is also capable of sequestering CO2. But Kim hopes to harness these carbon-capturing benefits while keeping a polluting waste material out of landfills and avoiding the emissions associated with making new cement.

How long the paint is capable of storing carbon is dependent on what happens to it after it is no longer needed. But Kim says it could be locked away for thousands of years unless exposed to extreme heat, which would alter the chemical structure of the carbonate.

As part of our carbon revolution series, Dezeen has profiled a number of carbon capture and utilisation companies that are working on turning captured CO2 into useful products from bioplastic cladding to protein powder and concrete masonry units.

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