grow green superfoods at home with ulrim's coral algae farming system

led by hyunseok an, korean studio ulrim — meaning reverberating sounds such as bell-tolling — has unveiled the coral: home algae farming, an indoor micro-algae growing system designed to welcome algae into our everyday lives. thanks to its simple farming and harvesting process, the coral allows users to access this outstanding food resource which is a sustainable alternative for nutritional diets.

known to be some of the most efficient CO2 scrubbers in the air — with ten times greater CO2 fixation than terrestrial plants — algae play a critical role in the sustainability of human life in our ecosystem. the 1974 UN world food conference deemed it the most ideal food for mankind and NASA uses algae as dietary supplements on long-term space missions because of the rich, well-balanced nutritional content.

‘even so, however, we may not fully enjoy algae’s outstanding benefits in our everyday lives,’ comments ulrim. ‘rather, we tend to dismiss it, associating it with negative feelings: mossy, slimy, gross. this isn’t strange, because we usually see algae in unpleasant situations—stagnant water, with a nauseous smell like pond scum—and these contexts influence our perception of algae as distasteful. because of this emotional rejection, we might underestimate algae’s values, try to eliminate it from our everyday lives, and thus lose the potential benefit to our health and our environment.’

image by jarrod erbe photography

with this in mind, ulrim has created the coral in order to rebuild the relationship between humans and algae. to do so, the wall-mounted bioreactor proposes a daily ritual for algae consumption through home algae farming activities. each culture cell in the four-by-four grid wall frame contains around 2 grams of algae when it turns dark green—the recommended daily intake amount. the 16 cells in the farm enable users to grow and eat algae every day because one cell has a biweekly cycle to replenish after harvesting.

project info:

name: the coral 

designer: ulrim

function: indoor micro-algae farming system