Absorption to Digestion
A grant funded design intervention for mitigating toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie.
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
Aldo Leopold
Absorption to Digestion was a research-driven design project that stemmed from an advanced industrial design studio that focused broadly on the intersections of design and ecology. The project proposed, examined, and tested various physical forms and material assemblies for holding plants capable of absorbing the overabundance of nutrients found in Lake Erie’s watershed. When anchored in rivers like The Detroit River or the Maumee River, this natural filter mitigated harmful algal blooms caused by the nutrients found in agricultural and urban run-off. This device was designed to prime local residents to reinterpret their use of monoculture farming practices and, in controlled studies, was proven to help complex ecosystems flourish.
