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Friday, May 1, 2009
Potential homes in the Sahara, thanks to sand-eating microbes
Posted by Justin Goff on Fri, May 1, 2009 at 1:00 PM
If Magnus Larsson, a student of the Architectural Association in London, has his way, he'll combat the encroaching Sahara desert and provide green refugee housing simultaneously. The ambitious plan turns sand into sandstone by using microbes to eat the sand and output a solid surface that can be shaped into any structure needed.
While there is already a plan being carried out to plant more vegetation in the soil, Larsson's proposal provides much more than just a simple green line. It will serve as more of a structure with the purpose of creating not only a habitat for the trees and vegetation, but for the humans who could live and take care of them. This seems to be a win-win scenario for many of the African nations involved, not only in preventing their nations from turning into Sahara sand, but also providing a more comprehensive solution than simply planting migratory trees.
Winning a Holcim Award for sustainable construction in 2008, this futuristic idea of creating hospitable habitat out of such desolation could help countries out like Nigeria.
"Sokoto in northern Nigeria is a desert city in the extreme northwest of Nigeria. One of the strange wonders of Nigeria is the fact that the country is the only nation in the world where the population in the desert region far outstrips the population in the coastal area. This stranger-than-fiction situation makes Sokoto an ideal site for the project." - DUNE pamphlet
There are many concerns with a project such as this. Deserts are needed for the Earth because they have in themselves whole ecosystems that creatures thrive in such harsh conditions. The idea of infecting the ground with microbes to turn whole parts of desert to useable stone haunts an idea of the possibility of going further than originally intended. Like any ecosystem, the desert is just as a fragile place for its inhabitants. With inventive and thought-provoking projects such as Larsson's, we should find other unconventional methods to sustain and maintain the resources we have already.
via BLDGBLOG : Flickr set
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