The last September, Federico Borello’s project BIOCLAD has been presented for Final Graduation at the Politecnico di Torino. Federico graduated with honors and the project has been awarded with publication among the school’s best Final Thesis.
The thesis is part of a body of work that Cesare Griffa and Roberto Giordano are building on the theme of living facades within the Polito. BIOCLAD is a photobioreactor system to be used as external cladding on building surface:
“BIOCLAD is an adaptive biodigital cladding system for the cultivation of microalgae able to transform the solar energy into chemical energy through the photosynthetic process, fixing CO2 and producing O2. Microalgae function as a sort of micro biorefinery, from their biomass can be extracted proteins for the food industry, omega 3 and amino acids for the nutraceutical industry, cosmetic and pharmaceutical molecules, bioplastics and biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The allocation of a sensor system able to map in real time the environmental conditions and using data as input for mechanical and biological transformations, allows to propagate the autonomous intelligence of the single component to a system of components defining a system of distributed intelligence.”
Credits:
Design: Federico Borello
Tutors: Cesare Griffa, Roberto Giordano
Biologic Consultant: Mario Tredici