8 makers using biodesign to grow their work

A growing mass of craftspeople, designers, scientists, engineers and investors are proposing biodesign as a solution to many of the problems of unsustainable industries, from fashion to furniture design.

At its simplest, biodesign is the practice of incorporating natural processes into building or making, often by fermenting, cultivating or genetically engineering organisms such as bacteria, algae, yeast, fungi and proteins to grow materials and objects – think furniture made from fungi, yarns made from processed kelp, and genetically engineered spider silk.

It may sound like sci-fi, but biodesign is something humans have been doing for millennia, to leaven bread, make alcohol and pasteurise milk. But now, advances in genome editing allow us to manipulate DNA with precision – and biodesign has become a $13.4bn industry. Here are some of the pioneering makers working in the field today.

Amy Congdon
New York-based Congdon has been using her embroidery skills to create scaffolds to support cell growth. Not only could her technique be used to grow sustainable materials for fashion, but Congdon believes it has potential in the field of tissue-engineering, for growing skin and eventually whole organs. ‘Textiles as a discipline offers a way to create bespoke structures that are difficult or impossible to achieve in other mediums,’ she says.

Suzanne Lee
One of the pioneers of biofabrication, Suzanne Lee is the founder of Biofabricate, 'a platform for biomaterial innovators and consumer brands growing a sustainable future' and author of the 2005 book Fashioning The Future: Tomorrow’s Wardrobe. Her groundbreaking Biocouture project was a fashion collection created from kombucha bacteria.

Carole Collet
Collet is founder of Central Saint Martins’ Materials Futures and Biodesign master’s courses. In her own work, she uses mycelium, a network of thread-like fungi roots, to mimic traditional techniques that would normally be oil-based and non-biodegradable. She has used this to develop natural tie-dye (called ‘tie-grow’), slow-grown embroidery and lace, mycelium-based puff binder and Bondaweb, a form of pleating that stays in place even when washed.

Natsai Audrey Chieza
Among the projects developed by Natsai Audrey Chieza’s studio Faber Futures is a biodesigned dyeing technique called Project Coelicolor. A soil-dwelling organism is grown directly onto fabric and its naturally secreted pigment creates a watercolour-like purple hue that’s chemical-free, colourfast and uses dramatically less water than industrial dyeing.

Jen Keane
Keane wants to prove that natural materials can also be technical, transparent and lightweight, rather than ‘tea-coloured and granola-looking’. She has developed a trainer using the K. rhaeticus bacteria, which forms a mesh-like structure on a nano scale. Her ‘weaving’ process involves creating a scaffold of threads (something she likens to the warp) in 3D, overlacing it almost like a spider’s web.

Diana Scherer
Amsterdam-based artist Diana Scherer creates intricate 3D textiles by manipulating the root growth of plants. Her work explores the relationship between man and the natural environment and the boundaries between plant culture and nature.

Sebastian Cox and Ninela Ivanova
Furniture designer Cox and researcher Ivanova teamed up to produce a collection of furniture out of mycelium and scrap willow wood. The Mycelium + Timber collection include simple stools and lights.

Piero D’Angelo
The London-based designer Piero D’Angelo’s slippery Wetware Couture garments are made from the neuron-like networks of slime mould. His work strives to redefine Couture, where users can grow their own outfit and wear living organisms.

This is an edited extract of an article in the September/October 2019 issue of Crafts magazine