Glass as Habitat: Cultivating Multispecies Ecologies in Porous Scaffolds

Abstract

Glass has been central to modern architecture, enabling visual transparency while acting as an impermeable boundary between interior and exterior environments. Yet, despite its recyclability, architectural glass generates significant waste that is frequently downcycled. This project repurposes waste glass to develop porous scaffolds that support photosynthetic growth, blurring architectural boundaries for inhabitation beyond the human scale. A series of material experiments across foamed, sintered, and slumped-cast glass examineswater absorption, evaporation, light transmission, and long-term growth retention to understand how biological life can be sustained within an otherwise inert substrate. The resulting interconnected pore networks and semi-translucent qualities enable colonisation to establish within the material rather than only on its surface. At façade scale, this bio-integrated system reframes ideas of maintenance and purity, positioning glass as a scaffold for deep bioreceptivity and multispecies interaction.