Watch out, beer can house, there's a new construction material in town — seaweed. While your closest encounter with this gift from the sea may have been in a bowl of Chinese soup or wrapped around your sushi, citizens of Læsø, Denmark, once used seaweed to construct their homes. And one organization hopes a new seaweed home will bring the practice back.
Seaweed collects on the shore and turns out to be quite the useful housing material. According to DeZeen, it's fireproof and non-toxic in addition to insulating. Despite its positive effect on the environment (more seaweed means less wood), the practice of building seaweed homes in Læsø fell away, but non-profit organization Realdania Byg hopes to resurrect the tradition.
That's where the Modern Seaweed House comes in. Design company Vandkunsten married the old practice of seaweed construction with new building practices to create a modern, environmentally-friendly building. Realdania Byg hopes it will spark an ongoing effort to build sustainable houses, restore old seaweed houses, and innovate this construction technique further.
Would you live in a seaweed house?
Find more great food content on Delish:
