The Rise Of Biodesign - Growing Our Way To A More Sustainable Future

Permeating our news channels, social media feeds and newspaper headlines is the growing debate around how best to tackle the global climate emergency—as evidenced by the current uproar around the burning Amazon and the relative inaction of billionaires, or others deemed able to intervene. 

Often packaged under the term "sustainability," we are being asked to rethink what we eat, how we travel and what we buy to reduce our collective environmental impact. But if we are to drastically reduce climate impact on the scale required to halt climate change, shouldn’t the way things are designed and made have sustainability fundamentally built-in?  What is the "greenest" way to design and make homes, clothes, cars and even food? A growing community of designers and scientists believe the answer is to follow nature’s blueprint and incorporate biological systems into the creation of objects, so that they are symbiotic with our planet, rather than parasitic or polluting.

Integral to this community is Suzanne Lee, who coined the term "biocouture" in the early 2000s when she began growing fabrics for clothing, using yeast, bacteria, tea, and sugar.  What began as experimental "proof of concept" growths in her South London studio grew into a biocouture project and gave rise to her book Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow's Wardrobe, which explored how designers are working with scientists to define and create the clothing of the future. Lee was also a senior research fellow at Central Saint Martins, where her work has inspired a swathe of students who are driving the fast-evolving practice of bio-based materials design, and the interrogation of the intersection of science and design.

Biodesigner and academic, Professor Carole Collet, has pioneered the discipline of Textile Futures, followed by Material Futures at Central Saint Martins since 2000.  These programs have cultivated pioneering work such as that of Natsai Audrey Chieza, whose work includes identifying bacteria pigments for sustainable textile dyeing to replace existing toxic dyeing processes. Professor Collet’s newest program is the MA Biodesign degree, which has its first intake of students in September 2019. But why biodesign? And why now?  

The MA Biodesign director, Nancy Diniz, explained to me that the course evolved out of a need to tackle “complicated contemporary (environmental) challenges” with a hybrid approach that integrates science and design. The course has a biology and design framework and will involve lab-based analysis and teaching of the fundamentals of biology.

“This is the first (degree) dedicated to biodesign that is truly interdisciplinary, tapping into craft and human and body-centric material design,” she said. With two biologists on the course staff, the students will be able to apply biological frameworks and scientific rigor to what was previously the trickiest territory to navigate, and the most common reason for a lack of progression of prototyping and development beyond speculative stages. 

The course will have two industry partners from the textiles and plant-based materials sectors, proving that industry is on the lookout for hybrid graduates who can help solve material, design and waste problems with biodesign.

Diniz is currently based in the U.S., with her company Augmented Architectures, but says there is a critical mass of designers and industry members in Europe, which is “much more advanced” in terms of biodesign. There is already interest in hiring graduates of the program that has not yet commenced. 

Add to this the recent news that Hong Kong-based textile and technology incubator The Mills Fabrica is planning to expand to the U.K. in 2020, to premises just a stone’s throw from Central Saint Martins in London’s King’s Cross, and it is starting to look as though industry is backing the talent and business potential of emerging biodesigners and their novel materials. “With this new expansion, we look forward to continuing to work with our partners in building out a global Techstyle community of innovators and to support these innovators to take their ideas to market,” said Vanessa Cheung, Founder, The Mills. 

With the increasing number of graduates growing materials and requiring lab space, rather than simple design studios, what ecosystem exists to support these designers?  How do they access affordable lab space on a small budget? Open Cell is a West London-based co-working lab space for biotech prototyping that supports graduates and small businesses who combine scientific and creative disciplines to redesign the materials of our future.  

Open Cell was founded by a physicist and a designer, Dr. Thomas Meany and Helene Steiner, respectively, after they collaborated on several projects at the intersection of design and science and founded a biotech startup, but could not find affordable lab space. Another such facility is Green Lab, London’s first incubator workspace for sustainable urban farming entrepreneurs and "agritech" startup businesses. Green Lab opened in 2017 to develop a community for sustainable food innovators, to help serve the country’s growing £14 billion agri-tech sector.

With Open Cell supported by SynbiCITE, The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Council and U+i property developers, there is a clear message here that the work being done in this post-academic and pre-commercial industry stage is the creative and hope-filled cutting-edge stuff that is combining design and science to great effect. Such collaboration of different disciplines is difficult to find in industry - a fashion designer working in partnership with a mycologist? Unlikely.

That is exactly the kind of partnership that happens at Open Cell. Current residents include Blast Studios, founded by a trio of architects in 2018, who collect used coffee cups and recycle them with mycelium to create sustainable furniture under the banner "Lovely Trash." 

Also based there is the multi-award winning circular built environment company Biohm and Wetware Couture—a team of designers and robotics engineers led by Piero D'Angelo whose experiments are based on the question ‘What if our garments could be made of smart living organisms?’ 

In September, Open Cell opens its doors during the London Design Festival to inform and inspire enthusiasts, academics and the general public alike to explore biodesign. 

With a schedule spanning talks at the V&A, a public launch party complete with a mycelium bar grown from mushroom roots, a keynote speech by Suzanne Lee and a bio-fashion show featuring lichen-designer Piero D’Angelo and leather and mycelium upcycler, Aurelie Fontan.  It promises to open a window into how our food and fashion is being influenced by biomaterials already, and how they may grow into the fabric of our everyday lives.