DIGITAL ECOLOGIES

In collaboration with:

Marisa Charusilawong, Vincent Hygh, and Iker Luna


With the focus within the design community towards green technology; there has been an emergence of bio-composites. Some make the statement that bio-composites work better than standard composites. Hemp posses a great fiber that should be utilized within bio-composites. The branches of hemp, with their hollow core, work exceptionally well at retaining resin thus creating a more solid material. Focusing towards the innovative properties involving bio-composites we have discovered our thesis. How can we manipulate the fiber properties of hemp through branching?


With a relatively short growth cycle of 120 days and the ability to be planted densely at a rate of 3 to 5 hundred plants per square meter hemp has great potential to become a cash crop. Hemp is a plant that has a wide range of uses. In fact, “cannabis sativa” means “useful” (sativa) “hemp” (cannabis). The plant is very tall; ranging in height from 1.8 to 4.8 meters with majority of each hemp plant being comprised of a thin stalk, with no natural branches, and relatively few leaves. How can we train a plant that wants to grow straight up with no branches?

While many crops have been biologically manipulated over the years to increase yields, hemp has stayed fairly old-fashioned in its growth. Plants have been forced in many different directions; whether this is by a specific type of farming practice or going so far as to genetically modify the organism itself. More and more today we see a shift back towards natural practices. While some contemporary farming practices still rely heavily upon GMOs or heavy handed farming techniques, we see a niche market to utilize natural practices and augment the growing environment to manipulate the plant’s growth in a specific way.


We will work towards hacking the plant through branching. Increasing the yield of the hollow branches that have good fiber development these fibers could be utilized in bio-composites, a burgeoning new territory of design. A major competitor to hemp is flax plant which has a shorter height, thus creating a simpler fiber to extract. In branching hemp, the fiber will both posses hollow cores and shorter fiber lengths creating a competitive niche market product. We understand that the most appeal to a project lies in creating complexity through basic inputs and understanding the focus at a very detailed level. Maintaining this direction, we want to understand how fiber derived from hemp can be utilized in tensile structures, while maintaining simple components that have the same material characteristics that plant structures posses. →