The Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab, a project designed in collaboration with Margaret Ikeda and Evan Jones at CCA's Digital Craft Lab, is nearing completion and will be featured in the exhibition Designing Material Innovation, opening September 28 at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. The project is a prototype for a new kind of resilient coastal infrastructure: floating breakwaters that incorporate an ecologically optimized fiber-reinforced polymer composite substrate to mitigate wave action and contribute to marine diversity.

Designing Material Innovation, an exhibition and symposium organized by Jonathan Massey, exhibits five full-scale architectural prototypes and pavilions that exemplify new approaches to material, fabrication, and design. Created through collaborations between architects and industry partners, these works combine technological innovation in materials research and fabrication with aesthetic and ethical approaches to form and appearance. The exhibition is designed by Clark Thenhaus / Endemic and, in addition to the Float Lab, features projects by T+E+A+M, APTUM Architecture, Matter Design, and Matsys.

The project is a partnership with the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and Kreysler & Associates, a global leader in composites manufacturing. It builds upon three years of research and proof-of-concept prototypes that have been installed and monitored underwater for their ecological performance. The exhibition runs through December 2017, and the Float Lab will be deployed in the San Francisco Bay in early 2018.