Cambridge architects have won a public choice award at the London Design Biennale for a prototype home constructed with flexible wooden partition walls which can be shifted to meet the changing needs of residents. The invention aims to reduce waste and carbon while also improving living conditions for those who cannot afford expensive refurbishments.
Advanced microscopes at the University’s Sainsbury Laboratory are revealing the potential of plants as green factories for new chemicals and materials - as well as their intricate beauty.
Cricket bats should be made from bamboo rather than traditional willow, say researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation. Extensive tests showed that bamboo performs better than willow as well as being more sustainable and cheaper.
Cambridge researchers are sharing a quick and easy way to mass produce face shields for health workers in the poorest countries.
Modified natural materials will be an essential component of a sustainable future, but first a detailed understanding of their properties is needed. The way heat flows across bamboo cell walls has been mapped using advanced scanning thermal microscopy, providing a new understanding of how variations in thermal conductivity are linked to the bamboo’s elegant structure. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will guide the development of more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings, made from natural materials, in the future.
Cambridge researchers have captured the visible nanostructure of living wood for the first time using an advanced low-temperature scanning electron microscope.
The Centre for Natural Material Innovation exhibited their proposals for timber skyscrapers at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition.
Cambridge architectural engineer is part of the team that has built Rwanda’s first international stadium
Researchers have designed a super stretchy, strong and sustainable material that mimics the qualities of spider silk, and is ‘spun’ from a material that is 98% water.
Molecules 10,000 times narrower than the width of a human hair could hold the key to making possible wooden skyscrapers and more energy-efficient paper production, according to research published today in the journal Nature Communications. The study, led by a father and son team at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge, solves a long-standing mystery of how key sugars in cells bind to form strong, indigestible materials.
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