To tout the usefulness of Arboblend, a hot new bioplastic that looks all but poised to take the bright, sunshiny world of renewable construction materials by storm, students and professors from Stuttgart University's Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design used it to build this spiky modular pavilion and filmed the entire process. The resulting piece of manufacturing porn starts with a lowly tub of bioplastic granulate, made from over 90 percent renewable materials, and takes it through the rounds of melting, pressing, and thermoforming that produced this polygonal serpent of a structure. As the project team explain—and this is to be read in a triumphant cadence, with an eye toward a future where regular old plastic has been rightfully shunned in favor of the eco-friendly blend—"thermoformable sheets of bioplastics will represent a resource-efficient alternative in the future, as they combine the high malleability and recyclability of plastics with the environmental benefits of materials consisting primarily of renewable resources." We're down, with the caveat that people should keep making short films out of the process. And here it is, your moment of Zen:
The Video:
· ArboSkin Video Clip: Short clip about the EFRE funded bioplastic facade [Vimeo via Dezeen]