Youthful Ingenuity Drives Construction Innovation

Creating a better Bay Area often hinges on innovative thinking, and youthful ingenuity is at the forefront of this transformation. A group of Bay Area students recently won an international biodesign competition with a novel idea: converting eggshells into building materials.

The idea was spurred by the task to create something out of waste. Students, Miti Mehta, Negar Hosseini and Jesus Guillermo Macias Franco embraced the challenge. Their creativity led them to wonder: what if broken eggshells, typically discarded, could be repurposed to benefit the environment?

“The whole thing started with, like, our first assignment, where we were just told to make something, like just make something out of waste,” Mehta said.

The team turned to Plow, a popular breakfast spot in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill area, to source their eggshells. With a steady supply of eggshell donations, the team embarked on creating a sustainable building material similar to lightweight bricks.

“We figured out why not do them in a similar way as bricks are made right now. So we made some molds out of DPA and PLA with 3D printers,” Franco said.

The team shaped the eggshell mixture using these molds and bound them with a gelatine-like adhesive from renewable sources. Their collaborators at UCSF utilized high-powered microscopes and other tools to assess the chemical bonding and strength of the materials.

Camille Moore, a graduate student in biochemistry at UCSF, was impressed by the results:

“It’s actually very strong. We did a force test and then compared it to commonly used building materials, and we saw that it was actually comparable,” Moore said.

The final designs interlock into a modular building system. While the world might not be walking on eggshells anytime soon, the team says the bricks are already strong enough to work as an acoustic filler or as a trim material. And with an almost inexhaustible source, the team believes their eggshell engineering could help provide a bridge into a new era of sustainable biodesign.

“I am, I like to think of myself as a very urban-oriented kind of architectural designer. So, I would love to see it kind of on a landscape setting, you know, in a park, public park. I’m a father myself, so I would love to see my daughters playing in the park with our material being used in that playground,” Franco said.

The team’s project was supported not only by UCSF but also by the Autodesk Technology Center in San Francisco. This success story highlights how young minds can drive construction innovation, turning everyday waste into valuable resources for building a sustainable future.