DumoLab Research Invites Philly Residents, Young and Old, to Become Change Makers

To glimpse the future of architecture in the face of accelerating climate change, it would be easy to overlook Saint Mary’s Nursery School (SMNS). The school’s building doesn’t stand out from its West Philadelphia neighbors for sustainability, but SMNS students ages four to eight, guided by researchers from Weitzman’s DumoLab, are making hamster houses, roof tiles, swings, and small shelters out of clay, slime, moss, fungi, insect shells, and even a Play-Doh like biomaterial sourced from orange peels. Here, world building starts with materials found in nature.

DumoLab is a team of architects, designers, biologists, and materials scientists who are investigating and making new biomaterials that can be used for architectural, structural, design, and manufacturing applications. Led by interdisciplinary architect Laia Mogas-Soldevila, an assistant professor of architecture at Weitzman, the lab was founded in 2022 to contribute to the biomaterial revolution that is rethinking building materials to more closely harmonize with natural systems. In the years since, the team has presented their work in high-profile international exhibitions like Design Weeks in London and Milan, as well as peer-reviewed publications such as Cambridge University Press. But they are equally committed to engaging with communities across Philadelphia to increase design literacy and advance sustainable design.

Working with SMNS and the School District of Philadelphia, DumoLab organized a series of workshops with students to introduce them to biomaterials and the lab’s holistic, bio-regenerative approach. “Ecoliteracy for Regenerative Futures” is a 4-semester curriculum for early childhood education that includes art and biodesign exercises rooted in educational theories such as 1920s-era tactile theory, the 1950s approach of the environment as third teacher, the 1970s architectural hand-mind pedagogy, and the 1990s “theory of change” evaluation tools that analyze community feedback to improve programs.

Mogas-Soldevila wants to introduce students to new tools they can use on what she considers their lifelong ecological journey—new vocabularies, and deeper understandings of material properties and regenerative practices. “The workshops introduce students very early on to new ideas about ecology, architecture, and our relationship to both,” Mogas-Soldevila says. “They are these mini-moments of embodiment that stay with the learner forever, and then children see themselves as change makers.”

In completing her Master of Architecture degree at Weitzman last year, DumoLab researcher Sharlene Yulita (MArch'24) focused her thesis on designing a kit of natural building materials for children to enhance environmental literacy in underserved schools in West Philly. “It is very important to develop regenerative habits early and to understand how their actions affect the environment,” Yulita says.

Sara Karlen, a Pre-K lead teacher at SMNS, says that the program was a success for her students, aged 4-8. “The children and the families were very happy with the experience. The link between natural materials and their applications for the future were explored in a fun, child-centric way that was enjoyable.” 

Across town, DumoLab partnered with the organizers of the popular Southeast Asian Market in South Philadelphia’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park. They helped create BagaSEAT, a series of outdoor, modular stools made from bagasse, a fibrous waste product of sugarcane juice.

Yuanyi Cen, a Master of Landscape Architecture student and DumoLab researcher had the idea for BagaSEAT while buying wares at the weekly summer market. She noticed a lack of seating in the park, as well as an abundance of this fibrous food waste. Back at the DumoLab, she mixed the bagasse with sodium alginate, a binder extracted from the cell walls of brown algae. The result, she says, is as strong as particle board, minus the toxic chemicals.

“Stools are very common on the streets in Southeast Asia for street food,” Cen says. “I wanted to see what I could produce that gives homage back to this culture that is big on sharing, food, and community,”

The stools solve a problem: they give vendors a place to sit as they sell their wares at the market. But they also serve a bigger purpose, and one at the core of DumoLab. “Working with organic materials can redefine how people in the community see waste,” Cen says. “Philadelphia in general has a lot of opportunities to tackle waste in new and different ways.”

BagaSEAT is a partnership with Penn's Netter Center for Community Outreach and funded by a Sachs Grant for Arts Innovation. The project continues the DumoLab’s extensive research on fruit waste, such as the CanoPIT project that reuses pulverized avocado pits to make a printable bio-based market canopy.

The BagaSEAT stools were recently exhibited in SanFrancisco at a symposium on biomaterials hosted by the California College of the Arts and Autodesk. Meanwhile, DumoLab has a series of projects in development that will continue to innovate and scale up recent experiments. “New hyper-local partnerships with food vendors are helping DumoLab researchers valorize waste in composites with unprecedented properties,” Mogas-Soldevila says. “New place-based curriculum in resilient design with biomaterials is underway to serve schools in Philadelphia’s climate-change-affected areas.