Wil V. Srubar III is the common denominator for cotton, cattle, the Houston Astros, the Dept. of Defense, micro algae and Prometheus Materials. If he had not grown up on a cotton farm-cattle ranch, he might never have become interested in saving the planet through biology-based building materials. And if his father had not taken young Wil off the family farm to Houston to watch the Astros play baseball, he might never have been awestruck by the Astrodome and motivated to become a structural engineer. If Srubar hadn’t become a structural engineer and bio-materials scientist running a laboratory at the University of Colorado, he would never have received a $2-million DOD grant to develop his pride-and-joy bio-block—masonry units made from micro algae-based “biocement” instead of portland cement. And were it not for all that, Prometheus Materials, which Srubar co-founded, would not have been created to produce the block.
Algae-produced block is the first concrete example of Srubar’s drive toward blurring boundaries between constructed and natural worlds. Photo courtesy Prometheus Materials