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Details
Living systems design, Biodesign, Community Engagement 

Client
SSIF (Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund Grant) 

Date: 2023

Mentor
Dr. Katia Zolotovsky

Team
Avantika Velho + Varun Mehtha +
Manini Banerjee 

︎︎︎ Presented at the AIA | ACSA Material Economies Conference 2023 

︎︎︎ Presented at the Stormwater Innovation Exposition 2023 @ The Roger Williams Park 

︎︎︎ Presented at Museum of the Modern Art (MoMA) through the projects showcase at the Biodesign Challenge Summit 2023 

︎︎︎ Dezeen Magazine Feature
︎︎︎ The Brown Daily Herald Feature
︎︎︎ Project Feature on RISD Media
︎︎︎ RISD Media Feature 
︎︎︎ The Biopods Instagram 

Historically, our rivers have been polluted by countless anthropogenic causes and as a team we are committed to help realize their rehabilitation.

We are mesmerized by wetlands - the kidneys of the earth - filled with diverse plants with root structures and micro-biomes that have evolved to purify contaminants in water through a process called bioremediation.

We are creating human-scale floating modular wetlands, called BioPods. Which facilitates the establishment of a long term bioremediation infrastructure as well as education for continued community involvement in the maintenance of their waterways.

The Biopods project embodies the well-established indigenous knowledge and technology of floating wetlands, knitting together a fabric that revitalizes fringe marshes and enhances water purification in a means with no synthetically edited organisms, no eletricity and no chemicals.

 

Prototypes deployed in the Providence River during the Clear waters event by Waterfire Providence. The Biopods lived at this site for 1-2 months. 


Biopod project launch and dissemination in various community events which engaged various students, alumni, professionals, scientists and more! 

Light, SEM, and Compound Microscopy highlights from in and around the Biopods. We found lots of promise in these initial tests, given which we are excited to deploy the pods in more water bodies and to bring more poeple closer to this technology in order for them to take charge of their water health and ecosystem resiliency. 

Our project methadology is two fold: creating a Bioremediating infrastructure and a method of dissemination that fosters community education. This is a project which focuses on boosting biodiversity through citizen science in order to purify the historically contaminated Providence River. 

The site of this project has water coming in from the historically polluted Blackstone River. The specific site, the Providence river is an estuarine intertidal wetland. This means that the water a mix of brackish and salty. 

Upon research, we found the site to be contaminated by heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic. Additionally, a high degree of petroleum products as well as pathogens from sewage currently contaminate the site.


Each BioPod module, a part of the overall BioPod system, consists of a buoyant mat of mycelium embedded with biogenic matter, like semi-aquatic marsh grass and seaweeds. The entire Bioremediating system can be broken down into a Mycoremediating (mycelium-remediating) and Phytoremediating (plant-remediating) system. 

It's crucial to understand that the pods are living machines - not a single intelligent machine but rather a system or an assemblage of minds; all relating and inter-relating and adapting to one another in complex and ever-shifting ways. They consist of various species working together, and they exhibit life processes such as growth, reproduction, and most importantly, metabolism. During this metabolic process, some organisms secrete digestive enzymes that play a vital role in breaking down complex chains of toxins. This enzymatic degradation is essential for detoxifying the environment as it breaks down complex chains of toxins into smaller, more digestible ones.

The diversity of organisms within the pods enables them to address a wide spectrum of toxins and pollutants present in the water. Some of these organisms work to accumulate and some work to digest. For more complex chains, the system works together so that accumulation allows for digestion in the long term. This adaptability and resilience make the Biopods effective living machines for improving water quality and ecosystem remediation.

The Biopods start as individual aggregated wetlands which come together to form larger tessalated pods. Over time, the porus myceleum boat fosters root interconnections. The mycelium boat decomposes at the rate at which the roots interconnect allowing for the re-fringing of once-present wetlands.

In order to ceate a Mycoremediating infrastructure, we needed to create a mold to grow a mycelium boat. We decided to use Reishi as it struck this perfet balance between creating a structurally resillient form as well as a detoxifying + remediating organism. We used the GIY living material from Ecovative, laser cut molds, used cups, straws and conducted prototyping workshops to assemble the first 6 prototypes. 

Being designers and marerial oriented researchers, we were excited to create a Porus Mycelium Matrix where We created a mycelium matrix using a mold of  beeswax to ceate channels for plant roots to reach the bottom of the pod. However, since we were orienting this to be a human-scale, community led project, we opted for a fabrication process that was more user friendly.  



The biogenic matter is propagated from a healthy wetland ecosystem of Tillinghast Marsh, further up the watershed.  The propagation was then organised on the pod, and then tested for balanced buoyancy. 

The biofabrication of the myco and phyto sections ultimately came together to create the first 6 prototypes of the Biopod Project! 


In the long term, the pods would re-establish biodiverse fringe marshes that would lead to active purification of the water supply, which would lead to a decrease in illness, a decrease in environmental toxins, and an increase in local biodiversity.

We are excited to deploy the pods in more water bodies and to bring more poeple closer to this technology in order for them to take charge of their water health and ecosystem resiliency. If you’ve made it this far into the page, follow our instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biopodproject/ and reach out to us at biopods@risd.edu.