Nurse Pod

The Nurse Pod concept aims to tackle the significant, ongoing issue of forest loss caused by wildfires and climate change. It employs thoughtful, design-driven approaches to address explicit ecological and environmental challenges, drawing from various disciplines to bolster support for the natural world.

Historically, fires played a crucial role in the life cycles of forests, facilitating post-fire regeneration and the emergence of new tree generations. Today, however, fires are burning with unprecedented intensity and speed, disrupting the traditional regrowth cycle. In 2020 alone, Colorado witnessed three of its largest wildfires on record. These intense fires have rendered native soils barren and exacerbated soil erosion, causing significant damage to the landscape and watershed. Despite human efforts to replant forests lost to a warming and drying climate, newly planted saplings often face daunting challenges such as high early mortality rates due to soil degradation, sterilization, and limited water availability. The 'Nurse Pod' initiative aims to aid in forest regeneration by providing a supportive environment for vulnerable tree saplings.

After two years of development and experimentation, the concept changed from an omnidirectional figure to a set of interlocking tripods now known as the Nurse Pod. This collaboration generated a design process that critically considers the notion of life support, decay, and the relationships between a designed object, its surroundings, and its purpose. By putting a design’s life cycle at the forefront of its development, we can better understand how our projects are wed to the environments in which they are built. The established design criteria for Nurse Pods is a system that collects, retains, and distributes resources to a sapling tree while dissolving into its surrounding environment, matching its pace of decay with the growth of the new tree. Inspiration for the initial concept was derived from the benefits of naturally occurring nurse logs, fallen trees that elevate and protect young seedlings in established forests. The pods sequester and distribute water and provide key nutrients for adolescent plants as the pods decompose. Initial concept iterations were tested in controlled greenhouse experiments, yielding results that have influenced the current prototype. The current pod prototype is 3D printed out of a biodegradable PLA (Polylactic Acid, a renewable bioplastic) and crushed stone composite material, which allows the object to naturally decay over time. The design features two modules, a rain/snow water collection and retention module, and a nutrient-rich soil-filled module. Each module contains a centralized aperture that snaps together for easy assembly and deployment. These apertures create a central void through which a wicking material spans vertically, absorbing collected water from below and distributing it to the sapling tree planted in the soil module above. Future design iterations will test other printable bio-materials such as recycled wood pulp and paper pulp, or locally sourced clay.

The nurse pod project is a critique of the way architects and designers think about our built work and its decay in relation to the natural world. By prioritizing the full life cycle of an object in its related environment, material and lifespan considerations move to the forefront of the discussion and become a crucial part of its function and performance. Capitalizing on the use of recycled and biodegradable materials we can be material stewards that work within the growth and decay cycles we often fail to consider.

This project is a collaboration between the LoDo Lab, HouMinn, and HiLo Lab.