There's a wall at Base One doing more than decorating a space. It's showcasing a material that didn't exist in this form a few years ago: a plastic-free, biochar-based foam, built into an acoustic panel that absorbs not just sound, but carbon.

It's the first product of its kind from Carbon Cell, an Imperial-connected startup, and we wanted to be the place where it made its debut. That's what "innovation in the building" means to us: not just sourcing sustainable materials, but giving early-stage, high-potential technology somewhere real to prove itself.

The material: plastic-free foam from waste

Here's the clever part. Carbon Cell's foam is made from biochar, a carbon-rich material produced from waste biomass through a process called pyrolysis. No plastic, no oil, no gas. It's a swap for the polymer foams, EPS and XPS, that quietly fill everything from parcel packaging to building insulation.

Those conventional foams come at a real cost: they're made from fossil fuels, extractive to produce and hard to shift once they're waste. Carbon Cell's alternative provides the performance needed, at an affordable price point, while cutting the carbon story almost entirely.

Replace just 10% of the foamed plastics used across the industry with this material and you save an estimated 838,00 tonnes of CO2e annually: that's not a rounding error, it's a real dent.

From lab question to acoustic panel

The investigation into Carbon Cell’s acoustic properties was supported by Innovate UK through funding looking at resource efficiency as part of the government’s Materials and Manufacturing Vision 2050.  Considering the cell structure of Carbon Cell's foam, the fact that the material can be sourced from locally derived agricultural waste, and where the need for low-carbon, locally derived materials is strongest, acoustics turned out to be a natural fit. .

Carbon Cell ran laboratory testing, then took the product into the field, refining the material, the panel's design and its internal lay-up, pushing the noise-reduction coefficient to 0.7.

The result is a material that is not only sustainable but suited to taming a noisy open-plan office, or doing serious acoustic isolation within an internal or external wall system.

Designed to compete, not just to comply

The panels on show are second-round prototypes, refined for aesthetics, functionality and manufacturability from the first set of Innovate UK products. Foam inserts sit inside felt trim, framed in polished hardwax and pine, with a geometric pattern designed to work with the material's natural texture rather than disguise it, and tuned to attenuate certain frequencies within the office setting. The company is now at work on further refinements and accepting requests for trial and demo installations now.

Benchmark it against the competition and Carbon Cell holds its own on weight, cost and acoustic performance, then pulls ahead decisively on carbon impact. Most "sustainable" alternatives ask designers to accept a trade-off somewhere. This one doesn't ask for one.

Why Imperial, why here

Carbon Cell's connection to Sciopolis runs straight through Imperial College London: the team are 2023 alumni of Imperial's Innovation Design Engineering Masters, run jointly with the Royal College of Art. As a building built to launch Imperial-connected ideas into the world, Base One was the obvious place to give their material its first real showcase.

It's a small example of something we care about at scale: buildings shouldn't just house innovation, they should demonstrate it.

What's next

Carbon Cell are moving from lab-scale development toward integrated manufacturing and full product delivery. Follow their journey here to watch that happen.

For more on how sustainability is built into the fabric of Base One, read about the hemp-based wall studs already in place, or head back to Innovator Stories for the rest of the series.