A highway of mold and wood
Can we build a highway of wood and mold? Can we grow raw materials alongside the highway and process them on-site? In The Growing Pavilion, by Company New Heroes, a mini-hackathon was organized on Tuesday at Dutch Design Week for the development of a sustainable highway. The evening was organized by Stichting Nieuwe Helden, the Biobased Delta, and innovation collective Noorderwind.
Innova58
The theme of the hackathon was the InnovA58 project from Rijkswaterstaat. This project is about the widening of the A58 between Sint-Annabosch and Galder and between Eindhoven and Tilburg. Part of this is also an innovation strip at the Klooster where Rijkswaterstaat wants to test sustainable innovations in practice to bring their goal closer in order to be climate neutral in [2030].
Growing Pavilion vision on biobased building
The Growing Pavilion shows a vision on building with natural, renewable materials: wood, algae, mycelium and, for example, vegetable fibers. Biobased materials have their own warm aesthetics, can store CO2 and are easy to recycle. The application possibilities are countless, but in practice they are by no means all utilized. The New Heroes Foundation and Noorderwind asked Biobased Delta to bring future makers together with knowledge and expertise from various fields: designers, sustainability experts, material experts, builders and policymakers.
Surprising insights
A short series of exercises led to surprising insights. Can’t you make the urine of wild peers useful? Can you make the highway foundation of Mycelium? Can’t you better use the heat from the highway? And can you use asphalt based on lignin from wood instead of bitumen? The insights are digitized and shared with all participants and Rijkswaterstaat. It examines which ideas are feasible for testing in the InnovA58 project.
Curious about biobased building or innovation through co-creation? Mail: info@biobaseddelta.nl, info@biobasedcreations.com info@noorderwind.nl