Sugarcrete®️ latest updates
School demonstrator in India
February 2024
Senior Lecturer Armor Gutierrez Rivas of UEL’s School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering (ACE), travelled to India to see how Sugarcrete® could be used for a variety of construction projects.
Mr Gutierrez Rivas visited Chemical System Technologies (CST), a key partner to the development of Sugarcrete®️ in India, including their pilot production site outside Delhi, where 400 bricks are made daily. They’re produced and used locally, reducing both transport costs and the environmental impact. Our partners at CST are currently looking into constructing buildings nearby using the material.
Mr Gutierrez Rivas met with academics from the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in Delhi. The school is India’s national centre of excellence in the fields of planning and architecture. They discussed opportunities for collaboration between UEL and the SPA, with hopes that Sugarcrete®️ will be used to build an affordable housing prototype and for other projects in Delhi. He also gave a lecture to students at the school.
He also went to Daurala, a sugarcane factory, two hours from Delhi, in Uttar Pradesh. It’s one of the largest sugarcane processing facilities in India and a potential manufacturing site for Sugarcrete®. If the material is made there, it would have several major advantages. Sugar plantation workers only work part of the year, so making Sugarcrete® should boost their incomes, while bagasse, the fibrous material that remains after crushing sugarcane, could become a valuable by-product, as it would be used to make the bricks. In addition, current brick production is energy-intensive and limited to periods of dry weather. Sugarcrete® can be made year-round and needs far less energy to be produced.
Sugarcrete® could have a significant impact in the south Asian country, especially in lowering carbon emissions in the building sector. UEL’s experts on Sugarcrete® will return to Delhi in the summer to continue their collaboration with the SPA and other partners.
Sugarcrete® database
January 2024 to 2027
Oluchukwu Okonkwo, Sugarcrete® PhD student and researcher, is working on a platform with different Sugarcrete® formulas pre-tested and approved for builders and end users to choose from based on their construction needs.
The platform is an open-source project that can also collect observation data from builders and help the University of East London enrich the database and keep improving the product.
Over the tracks project
August 2023 to September 2024
Objectives: To co-create and co-build a community garden in North Woolwich using Sugarcrete®.
Details: Students from UEL’s Architecture Department worked on the “Over the tracks” project, with students from Newvic, the local Newham Sixth Form College, to build a new community garden.
The garden will be built on unused land near Crossrail tracks in North Woolwich. It will include seating, planters and birdhouses built using Sugarcrete®. The initiative was developed in partnership with Newham Council. The space will be used by the local community centre, the Royal Docks Learning and Activity Centre, and neighbourhood residents to hold community events, and to grow food for the local food bank.
In October 2023, students from UEL and Newvic participated in a workshop to design the seating, planters and birdhouses. After that, both students worked on building the structures.
The building phase on the project will last until Spring 2024 and the space will be open to the public from Summer 2024. It is supported by the Greater London Authority, Crossrail, government levelling up funding, and the University of East London itself.
Project collaborators:
- UEL’s MA in Architecture students: Sinan Adulaymi, Francesco Stefan, Cristian Severin, Shushant Jadhav, Twinkle Shah, Jason Tshibangu
- Newvic college students
- London Borough of Newham (Megan Charnley and Sofia Khan)
- Tate & Lyle Sugars
Read the Over the Tracks report (PDF).
Sugarcrete®️ Slab
March to August 2023
In collaboration with Grimshaw, the team built a demountable, reusable, fire-resistant composite floor slab called Sugarcrete®️ Slab.
The Slab is one of a series of prototypes developing innovative construction applications which can be applied, disassembled, or extended in new or existing structures. It stems from Grimshaw's interest in interlocking geometries.
Objectives: The aim of the project was to develop ultra-low carbon building components using sugarcane bio-waste (bagasse), allowing the storage of biogenic carbon from fast-growing plants in construction materials as an effective strategy to delay carbon emissions.
Details: Sugarcrete®️ Slab adapts Abeille’s 1699 design for dry assembly flat vaults - the system is made of interlocking components which transfer loads across the slab between blocks, restrained using post-tensioned perimeter ties, reducing the steel content of the slab up to 90 per cent. Reducing steel, combined with the use of sugar cane fibres of different densities in a modular system allows the slab assembly to avoid the potential risks of cracking which occur with traditional concrete in extreme situations, absorbing the effects of seismic shock – a characteristic vital in earthquake-prone regions where sugar cane is cultivated.
Prototype testing conducted at UEL's SRI laboratories shows that Sugarcrete®️ Slab can offer an alternative to concrete slabs while demonstrating exemplary environmental benefits including carbon emissions 20 times lower than traditional concrete. The system also minimises curing time to one week compared to standard concrete which takes at least 28 days, it is five times lighter than concrete and is substantially cheaper compared to concrete production.
Project collaborators:
- Elena Shilova - Grimshaw
- Paris Nikitidis - XR Developer, Grimshaw
- Philip Singer - Computational Design Specialist, Grimshaw
- Robert Sims - Model shop Manager, Grimshaw
- Sky Henley - Computational Design Specialist
- Louis Bird - Video editing and filming, Grimshaw
- Ellie Saunders - Video editing and filming, Grimshaw
Read the Sugarcrete®️ Slab report (PDF).