Research

Research Designing shapes that life wants to colonise.

Designing shapes that life wants to colonise. Cenote's reef modules start as 3D files. Cave, Flower, Shell, Wave — the same forms players build in the game, drawn to be manufactured, immersed and colonised. They are produced by D-Shape, an Italian company that has been printing artificial reefs from mineral aggregate for over a decade. Their printer works by particle bed: a print head moves across a bed of sand and calcareous aggregate, depositing a binder layer by layer until the shape emerges from its base upwards. It produces geometries no mould could cast — porous, cavernous, full of the shelter juvenile fish need.