Blue Ceramics: Co-designing Morphing Ceramics for Seagrass Meadow Restoration

TL;DR

This paper presents a collaborative design process for creating morphing ceramics aimed at restoring seagrass meadows, integrating marine science insights with industrial design through digital fabrication.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interdisciplinary approach combining scientific knowledge and participatory design to develop ecological ceramic interventions.

Findings

Design guidelines for morphing ceramics

Successful digital fabrication of prototypes

Enhanced understanding of ecological restoration tools

Abstract

Seagrass meadows are twice as efficient as forests at capturing and storing carbon, but over the last two decades they have been disappearing due to human activities. We take a nature-centered design approach using contextual inquiry and iterative participatory designs methods to consolidate knowledge from the marine and material sciences to industrial design. The sketches and renders documented evolved into the design and fabrication guidelines. This pictorial documents a dialogue between designers and scientists to design an ecological intervention using digital fabrication to manufacture morphing ceramics for seagrass meadow restoration.