nPulp Could Be the Future of Sustainable Building Materials

While aesthetics will always be a significant design driver in modern architecture, sustainable design is a growing indication of innovative design in any particular project. At the top of the sustainable design index exists the Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) concept—a set of principles for designing products and systems in ways that return the end product back to the environment. 

Presented this past May at the Taiwan Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, the nPulp Nest eco-friendly architectural prototype is a shining example of the C2C concept in action.

The prototype house is made up of bricks and boards repurposed from wheat and rice waste that would have otherwise been burned in the field. (Image courtesy of YFY Group.)

The prototype house is made up of bricks and boards repurposed from wheat and rice waste that would have otherwise been burned in the field. (Image courtesy of YFY Group.)

Presented by the YFY Group, a Taiwanese company specializing in  papermaking, nPulp uses a unique enzymatic process to recycle the pulp of waste straw from rice and wheat harvests without the addition of harsh chemicals.

Inspired by the original invention of paper, YFY developed nPulp as a way of utilizing rice and wheat straw that would have otherwise been burned in Chinese and Taiwanese fields. Although nPulp has traditionally been used as an environmentally friendly packaging solution, the YFY engineers took the material one step further and created nPulp bricks and boards for architectural applications,using molds to form and dry the pulp using nontoxic binders.

The nPulp Nest fit in perfectly with the Taiwan Exhibition’s…

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