"HarvesStra" was presented on June 2026 at the BioDesignChallenge student competition in NYC celebrating our interdisciplinary students' effort on turning hyperlocal unavoidable food waste into circular architectural bio-composites for an outdoor classroom on Penn's Farm on Campus.
HarvesStra, developed for our "ARCH-7325 Inquiry into Biomaterial Architectures Seminar", collaborated with PennFarm and PennDining by developing bio-based composites as cladding and furniture for a much needed outdoor classroom on the farm grounds. Students collected inedible fruit waste from dining and Campus food trucks as well as crop waste from seasonal sorghum, sweet peas, eggplant and okra at PennFarm and transformed it at DumoLab's facilities by drying, grinding, and mixing it with sustainable binders. Blends were digitally manufactured using 2.5D and 3D printing, molding and casting, and hybrid technologies, as well as by devising post-processing techniques of site-specific environmental adaptation and durability. Outcomes comprised stools, shingles, and insulating panels that were naturally weathered and monitored over Winter and Spring at the farm to study their performance in outdoor and semi-outdoor conditions.
Lead Researcher and Seminar Teaching Assistant: Yasaman Amirzehni MSDAAD’24
WSOD Team across robotics, environmental design and advanced architecture:
Alia AlMusafer MSD-EBD’27, Mu Cao MArch’26, Hong Wei MSD-EBD’26, Qinming Hou MSD-EBD’26, Tom Wyburn MSD-RAS’26. With PennPraxis assistance on classroom tectonics by Elliot Bullen and Navya Pandey MSD-EBD’26
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