Assistant Professor of Architecture Laia Mogas-Soldevila and her team of four students from her seminar, Inquiry Into Biomaterial Architecture Development, were awarded second place at the 10th Annual Biodesign Challenge Summit in New York City for their project, BagasSERIES: Hyper-local Circular Design From Sugarcane Waste.
BagasSERIES reimagines local waste transformation into open-air market supporting products through material innovation and community collaboration. Centered at Philadelphia's historic FDR’s Park vibrant Southeast Asian Market (SEA), the project identifies an opportunity to address bagasse waste produced daily by the many sugarcane juicing stands. To better understand this waste stream as well as park user and vendor needs, we engaged local agents with interviews and on-site research. The outcome is a catalog of biocomposite-based products made from hyperlocal organic waste collected directly from the market and transformed using non-toxic binders and low energy manufacturing. These products not only contribute to waste reduction but also serve meaningful and practical purposes of signaling, resting, wrapping, or paving, for the local SEA community.
Every year, high schools, colleges, and universities from around the world participate in the Biodesign Challenge program to present innovative science and design projects at Parsons School of Design and the Museum of Modern Art. Laia and her students joined 65 teams from 24 countries in the competition. Their winning project was presented to 200 people at the MoMA.
Team: Yuanyi Cen (MLA'24), Kodak Han, (MArch ‘25), Simone Yang (MArch ‘25), Chun Zhou (MArch ‘25), Dr Laia Mogas-Soldevila.
Host: Southeast Asian Market Association at FDR Park, Philadelphia.
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