SANA Development of Bioreceptive Porous Glass Scaffolds

Abstract

This project explores the reawakening of glass, traditionally a symbol of clarity, fragility, and separation, into a living architectural skin capable of hosting and embedding microbial life. Rooted in a design-driven inquiry, the research reclaims post-consumer glass waste and reconfigures it into porous scaffolds through kiln-cast glass processes, focusing on experimental sintering and foaming methods. These fabrication techniques cultivate surface morphologies that embrace roughness, porosity, and semi-translucency, not as defects, but as ecological opportunities. Guided by the principles of bioreceptivity, the scaffolds are designed to support the colonisation of photosynthetic organisms such as microalgae, cyanobacteria, and moss. Experimental material development and characterisation reveal that pore size distribution, permeability, moisture retention, and surface chemistry are not merely functional properties, but mediators of biological attachment, growth, and vitality. Each glass surface and pore becomes a cultivated terrain— its microtopographies and light-filtering gradients shaping microclimates of microbial settlement, from dense biofilm carpets to ephemeral photosynthetic veils. At scale, morphology prototypes demonstrate that bioreceptivity can be spatially tuned, responding to environmental conditions, privacy gradients, and solar orientation through the tuning of pore networks and translucency. The result is a series of glass artefacts that act not as static enclosures but as adaptive, living membranes, where boundaries dissolve between the synthetic and the biological. This work proposes a new material language in which waste becomes substrate, surface becomes host, and architectural design becomes a dialogue with living systems. By merging glassmaking with ecological thinking, the research charts a pathway toward bio-integrated materials that are not only sustainable but temporal, sensorial, expressive, and alive, contributing to a future where architecture supports and enhances both human and microbial life.