Graduate designer Hyunseok An wants to highlight the role that "unappreciated" algae could play in our diets by creating an indoor micro-farm for the home.
Designed to introduce algae into our everyday lives, The Coral micro farm is a wall-mounted bioreactor that aims to encourage people to use algae as a more sustainable component of a nutritional diet.
As part of his graduate project at Rhode Island School of Design, An proposed integrating algae consumption into our daily rituals via home-farming activities.

"Algae are some of the most efficient carbon dioxide scrubbers in the air, with 10 times greater CO2 fixation than terrestrial plants," explained the designer.
According to An, algae was deemed "the most ideal food for mankind" in the 1974 UN World Food Conference, while NASA uses algae as dietary supplements on long-term space missions due to its rich, well-balanced nutritional content. "Algae is critical for sustainability yet is an unappreciated part of nature," the designer added. "The Coral suggests a socially acceptable way of bringing algae in."

Comprised of 16 cubes that fit into a wooden four-by-four grid, each culture cell in the wall-frame changes colour from transparent to a light, mint green hue and eventually to a dark forest green when the algae is ready to be consumed.
When fully grown, the cell contains around two grams of algae, the recommended daily intake.
The Coral has a bi-weekly cycle, with ea...