BIO DESIGN

Bio / Digital / Fabrication / Growing biological material / Designing its form / Making the model, PLA 3D prints, wood, variable dimensions, 2018

This design research project focuses on the intersection between digital design explorations and biological material explorations, in which “making” objects was an integral part of the research and design process. Bio / Digital / Fabrication explores mycelium--the underground filament system of mushrooms--as a building block, and cellulose--a component of the cell wall of green plants--as an organic translucent surface. Mycelium is a tough material that shapes to the volumetric forms of molds. Cellulose has the ability to take on the shape of any surface when dried on that surface. Once

Basavaraj understood the capabilities of the biological material, she explored possible forms using the connections among three specific polyhedrons: the Truncated Octahedron, Truncated Tetrahedron, and Cube-Octahedron. In order to stabilize the polyhedrons, Basavaraj introduced aluminum space frames--aluminum is one of the few metals that is both light-weight and reusable. The mycelium was grown into panel forms that fix onto the aluminum frame. The translucent nature of cellulose added to both the aesthetic qualities and organic-ness of the kiosk. The intent was to make the structure light-weight, easy to transport, easy to assemble and disassemble, all while reducing the use of materials that cannot be reused.

The designed kiosk provides space for interaction with the structure, interaction with people, space for rest and seclusion, and most importantly, spaces for discovery of the organic material.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Cyprien Deryng

Powow !! is a project that supports indoor plant germination. It creates a miniature, edible landscape that celebrates plant germination. Powow !! is an aeroponic system—the mist is the tool that is used to grow and moisten plants. This micro-landscape enhances germination, and the vitamin-rich micro-greens that are grown this way are more desirable than traditional greens that are germinated in bulk. 

The technique used to produce these micro-greens is called smog pony or aeropony. The device uses an ultrasonic probe that transforms liquid water into cold vapor. A “coolboard” electronic card controls the humidity, temperature, and oxygen to optimize production without mold. The card also can provide humidity and other information on a mobile phone.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Ori Elisar

The Living Language Project is a generative bio-linguistic research project that explores the boundaries between culture and nature: that is, it concerns the body and its surroundings and language and its speakers. The Living Language presents the evolution of the Hebrew alphabet over the 2000 years that it was considered a “dead” language. 

In The Living Language Project, Elisar uses Paenibacillus vortex bacteria to create 2000-year-old Hebrew characters, which then evolve into contemporary Hebrew letters as the bacteria grow. He employs bacteria as a literal “living” language that reflects the linguistic history of Hebrew.

Elisar incorporated the unpredictable aspects of bacterial growth as a variable in how the letters grow and morph. Unpredictable changes are typical in biological evolution as well as in the evolution of civilization, and the evolution of letters.

The Living Language Project deals with the tension between controlling the behavior of living organisms and letting nature run its course. It also explores the developing states of the Hebrew language. The project questions nature, culture, letterforms, and language, and considers how biological fabrication technologies can interact with the design world. 

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Victoria Geaney, Bernardo Pollak & Anton Kan

Living Light Dress, Photobacterium kishitanni, raw wool felt, agar substrate, sea water, yeast medium, Variable size, 2016

Funding: The University of Cambridge, Synthetic Biology Strategic Research Initiative SynBio Fund for Novel Bioluminescent Reporters and Synthesis of Novel Optimized Lux Reporters for Eukaryotic Systems.

The Living Light Dress is a collaborative project between fashion-led researcher Victoria Geaney, and synthetic biologists Anton Kan and Bernardo Pollak. The dress is a living garment covered in the deep-sea bacteria Photobacterium kishitanni, which is bioluminescent, producing a soft, blue glow. The dress was made using raw wool felt, which was photographed on the model while still dry. The garment was then coated with agar substrate containing nutrients derived from yeast extract. The team then inoculated the dress with bacteria. After approximately ten hours, it began to glow and continued to glow for 72 hours. It was photographed on the mannequin after approximately 10–12 hours of growth. The two images were put together digitally. Therefore, the work blurs the lines between reality and the hyperreal—a speculative fashion design.

The project aims to demonstrate how collaborative working methodologies can be developed between fashion and biology practitioners. This type of innovative material could have potential for future biological materials and biologically produced wearable technology. However, we are more interested in asking questions surrounding ecological and philosophical implications when working with living materials, rather than producing wearable applications. The Living Light Dress, which was conceived and produced using design methodology, may be considered a design probe and experiment. The Living Light Dress project aims to open up discussions about the ecological, social, philosophical, and political dimensions of utilizing living and biological materials in design, while also making visible these beautiful microbial worlds.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & James King with The University of Cambridge IGEM Team 2008

E. chromi: The Scatalog, Mixed media: aluminium briefcase, foam, acrylic, 6 x plastic model faeces. Graphic printed on adhesive vinyl on inside upper side of case, Video (supplied digitally), 4mins 30secs. .mov file, 47cm (w) x 49(h) x 42cm(d) (for display), 2009

E. chromi: The Scatalog is part of an experimental collaboration between artists/designers and scientists in the emerging field of synthetic biology. In 2009, seven Cambridge University undergraduates spent the summer genetically engineering bacteria to secrete a variety of colored pigments that are visible to the naked eye. They designed standardized sequences of DNA, called BioBricks™, and inserted them into E. coli bacteria. Each BioBrick™ part contains genes from existing organisms, which enables the bacteria to produce a color. By combining these with other BioBricks™, bacteria could be programmed to do tasks for humans. Their invention, which they called E. chromi, won the Grand Prize at the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM).

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and designer James King worked with the team while they developed the technology in the lab. Ginsberg and King explored various agendas--some of which were not necessarily desirable--that could shape the use of a foundational technology like E. chromi and in turn, our everyday lives. The Scatalog imagines using E. chromi for personalized disease monitoring: engineered bacteria could be ingested in yogurt, colonize the gut, and “watch” for chemical markers of diseases. If they detect disease, the bacteria produce an easy-to-read warning by coloring feces. The Scatalog, a tool for critical discourse in synthetic biology, was presented  at iGEM in 2009. Since 2009, Ginsberg and King’s critical fiction Scatalog became a goal for synthetic biologists, and engineered probiotics based on this project are now being tested.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Sascha Pohflepp

Drawing upon an imagined future, Growth Assembly proposes using synthetic biology to grow products that have commonly been delivered by heavy manufacturing. This project harnesses the natural environment to produce products and objects in order to reduce the environmental impact of shipping raw materials and packaged goods. Here, synthetic biology enables us to harness our natural environment for the production of things. Once the product structures are coded into the DNA of a plant, product parts can grow using the plant’s structures and support systems. When the product parts are fully developed, they are then stripped like a walnut from its shell or corn from its husk, ready for assembly. Once licensed products can be grown where they are sold, shops may then evolve into factory farms. Large items take time to grow and are more expensive, while small products are more affordable. The postal service delivers lightweight seed-packets for domestic manufacturers.

The “Herbicide Sprayer,” the first part of the Growth Assembly project, protects these delicate, biologically engineered horticultural machines. It is therefore essential to the imagined future in this project.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Mitchell Joachim

Smart DOTS is a radical strategy for rethinking street crossroads. It "injects" a system of intelligent environmental elements -"smart dots"- that can spread out from the core to the periphery, reorganizing the streetscape. This speculative design scheme critiques the hard boundaries that automobiles impose upon the streetscape, in which people are forced to move around cumbersome barriers, and often around dangerous metal cars. Our future street is a soft, gradient field: a “pixelated” urban landscape of distributed functions, with no hard borders between different street occupancies.

Soft MOBS proposes a new technological and material arrangement in which cars are adapted to cities in pliable organized movements -"soft mobs." It also introduces soft vehicles that allow users to be in direct contact

with the street. While architects and urban designers mostly take cars as a given, and are content to design streets and public spaces around car movement, in Smart DOTS + Soft MOBS Joachim and his collaborators challenge this well-worn assumption.

The design of Smart DOTS + Soft MOBS is organized into three phases: 2008, 2020 and 2028, respectively. In Phase 2008, Joachim suggests making minor design interventions. These immediate safety measures will mitigate conflicts between pedestrians and automobiles. Phase 2020 signals a transition period in which car lanes are narrowed, pedestrian zones are widened, and bicycle bollards are introduced with new car technology. Already in Phase 2020, Joachim and his collaborators suggest the placement of environmental "smart dots," or green modules that filter rainfall--what is called greywater--and, at the same time, slow down traffic to separate walking zones, bicycles, and transportation zones. Phase 2028 is the future embodied in "pixelated" surfaces, gradient green zones, and living self-sufficient machines that provide their own energy. These machines generate electricity through air movement. In the future, giant benevolent air-cleansing blimps dangle tentacles, which collide spongy seats in a playful catch-and-release plan for people moving about town. All life is enveloped in a sentient ecology of street, mobile systems, and people.

While the proposal for Smart DOTS + Soft MOBS with the SOFT Blimp Bumper Bus is specifically tailored for the Ninth & Fourth intersection in Brooklyn, NY,  it signals a new vision for the city, Smart DOTS + Soft MOBS also  crystallizes images of civilization reinventing itself. Smart DOTS + Soft MOBS is a speculative, prototypical strategy for inserting soft plazas in various street intersections. But it demonstrates that we can rethink the city as a whole by making nodal changes. These changes have the potential to infiltrate the rigid grid that in which we currently live.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

FAB TREE HAB Living Graft Prefab Structure, digital renderings of living structure grafted into shape with prefabricated Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) reusable scaffolds, Variable size, 2003–ongoing

Joachim’s dwelling, FAB TREE HAB, is composed of 100% living nutrients. This project overturns traditional anthropocentric ideas about life--that is, the notion that humans are the center of existence. In FAB TREE HAB, human life is instead incorporated within the terrestrial environs. Home, in this sense, becomes indistinct and fits itself symbiotically into the surrounding ecosystem. This home concept is intended to replace the outdated design solutions at Habitat for Humanity. Joachim proposes a method to grow homes from native trees. A living structure is grafted into shape with prefabricated Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) reusable scaffolds. In FAB TREE HAB, Joachim creates dwellings that are fully integrated into an ecological community.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

This platform is defined by various operations we can pre-form with mycelium--which are the underground fungi threads or hyphae that shape the vegetative part of fungi. The team grew the fungus Ganoderma lucidum (or Reishi) into various molds which were derived from computational output. In many cases, architects mimic biological systems, but do not operate in actual wet laboratory conditions. The internal filler is made up of mycelia substrate, and a combination of discarded wood chips, gypsum, and oat bran, which is consumed by the mycelia and then hardened into a tough, durable functional material. The external skin is bacteria cellulose. The mycelia substrate and bacterial cellulose integrate to become a hard biopolymer that is suitable for architectural applications and the Mycoform module.

Biologists and architects collaborated on this project to produce synthetic biodesign artifacts using current digital fabrication techniques. Applying the tools of synthetic biology--along with those from other biological disciplines, such as microbiology, and medical tissue engineering--produces products that are 100% organic, with minimal waste and energy expenditure. The team’s aim is to use grown materials to reshape the way people think about manufacturing products and genetic engineering.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

UK Jung, Elise Krespan, Alyssa Klein & Greg Sieber

Metagenomics is the analysis of DNA from a whole community of plants, animals, and microorganisms--which is called a biome. A metagenome is the complete genetic information from all the organisms in a biome. Genetic information is all around us, and the technology to gather, analyze, and manipulate that genetic information has become quite accessible, even outside of research institutions. Like digital information, which is encoded as a sequence of 0s and 1s, genetic information in our bodies is coded using a sequence of four different nucleotides. These four nucleotides, which are the basic structural elements for genetic coding, are made up of a base (one of four chemicals: adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine), plus a molecule of sugar, and a molecule of phosphoric acid. Specific nucleotide sequences are used encode specific genetic information. 

Genetic information is also coded beyond individuals in genomes--a complete set of DNA of a whole species--and in the collective metagenomes of entire populations of different organisms. For Metagenomic Field Kit, the design team focused on communication on various biological levels: that is, they researched how cells, organisms, and ecosystems send information signals to each other. The complexity and diversity of the metagenome found in a biome--a biological environment that includes all of its plant and animal life--can be utilized as an effective information “camouflage” strategy. External information can be embedded within this “noisy” genetic data, making the new information virtually untraceable. In a hypothetical near-future landscape that is monitored by digital surveillance, and dominated by corporate and governmental interests, the Metagenomic Field Kit offers a new channel for democratic communication—DNA. The kit allows users to avoid detection by storing sensitive information within DNA.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Nicole Koltick

Phenomenal Machines , video, variable dimensions, 2017

In Phenomenal Machines, cognition (including feeling and sensing) “emerges...as part of a stream of interaction and sensation.” Phenomenal Machines is a “compositional experiment” that enables “robotic arm[s], mineral crystals, and an interactive landscape to co-evolve.” Through this process, the robotic arms and crystals produce a shared “ecological space of their own, away from human incursion” (Technosphere Magazine). In this project, there are several distinct non-human agents (robotic and mineral) with different methods of feeling and sensing. These methods of feeling and sensing can be understood as imprecisely located cognitive machines. 

The locus and outcomes of this cognition produce diverse effects which are made visual in this project. The robots utilize basic vision and behavioral algorithms that enable them to interact within their landscapes, which influences the form and color of crystal formation and growth in Phenomenal Machines. This robotic landscape represents a highly imprecise agency. The crystals in Phenomenal Machines are “sensed” by the robots and the landscape, and the crystals are subject to beneficial and negligible alterations by both the robots and the landscape. The growth of the crystals is facilitated, amplified, or disturbed, in Phenomenal Machines, by the actions of the dynamic terrain (through secretion of salt solution or expansion and contraction of the dynamic surface), or the interventions of the robots operating within the terrain (through placement, movement, and disruption). The interactions that occur between these systems is of primary interest in Phenomenal Machines. These interactions produce emergent effects, which suggest causality and aesthetic implications that come from a set of synthetic relationships among machines, materials, and narratives.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Nervous System

3D-Printed Organ Research, human cells, 3D printed by SLATE, Variable size, 2019

This form was grown in a fully 3D reimagining of Nervous System’s Hyphae algorithm. The growth transforms from a sparse open tree structure to a densely reticulated network. It all began with an email from Jordan Miller in February 2016. Jordan was familiar with us from the open source models we had posted on Thingiverse, and in his words “totally captivated” by the series of branching sculptures we created for our growing objects exhibit. He proposed that our skills could be put to an epic task: “perhaps we could work together to make open-source software that the world could use to design synthetic living tissues and organ replacements for human patients.” The idea of taking our generative systems which are inspired by nature and using them to actually make living things was a dream come true.

While there are many labs creating artificial tissues, the problem is keeping them alive. Organs like the liver are composed of more than 100 billion cells which need support from intricate vascular networks that provide nutrients and oxygen while removing waste. Making things even more complicated, many organs contain multiple interpenetrating networks of fluids; in the lungs we have hierarchically branched airways and ensheathing blood vessel networks. Our goal is to create software which enables scientists to design customized multi-vascular structures for 3D-printed organs. Nervous System collaborated with the Miller Lab to design and generate these complex multivascular networks and materialize them in soft hydrogels for the first time.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

D.S Nicholas & Shivanthi Anandan

Garden Fresh Home Bio-design Substrates, mixed media including felt, Plexiglas, bio algae silicone, 48” x 60”, 2018/2019

This installation piece documents the development of an in-home plant hydroponic system and the biology, art, and design processes that went into the development of the project. Low maintenance, requiring no soil and little space, the unit enables plants to grow well in an indoor urban setting. This device allows people easy access to plant-based food, and was developed in an intensive science-driven design process that has the potential to induce dietary changes in populations that do not have easy access to healthy food. The installation includes a series of surfaces that were developed in silicone, felt and algae; they are the part of the algal substrate for the plant growing unit. Patterns for these substrates have been developed through a collaborative fine arts practice, and tested in the lab for their efficacy in growing both plants and the algal cultures. Prototypes shown include small versions of the system, a large felt and algae panel in a horizontal vitrine, and silicone plant growing test panels.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Miriam Simun

adōrō, 2014 [nosepiece), 30cm x 25cm x 6cm, 3D printed nylon, copper

Adoro means to speak to, accost, address; negotiate a matter with; accuse; ask, entreat, pray to, beseech, implore, plead;revere, honor, worship, adore; admire, esteem highly. The adoro is a sculpture worn by people undergoing a ritual to attend to the existence, life, history and memory of the Agalinis; this one plant on the verge of extinction. 

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Jordan Solomonic

Nourishing Dhaka: The design of an innovative, scalable, low-cost, carbon-sequestering community for climate refugees that incorporates novel material research into mycelium-based building materials, mycelium, wood, 3D Prints in PLA, acrylic, variable dimensions, 2016

Bangladesh houses the most climate-based refugees of any country. Many of these refugees are fleeing from the rural south into the capital of Dhaka, the world’s fastest growing megacity that’s home to twenty million people. In Dhaka, a majority of this population live in slums, and there is a pressing need for low-cost, scalable housing solutions. Solomonic’s research for Nourishing Dhaka is primarily focused on vernacular and cultural typologies, materials and ecology, incorporating experimental design, and construction methods. Extensive material research for this project involved the creation of a novel set of mushroom-based bricks that were prototyped at full scale. These carbon-sequestering infill bricks--which are composed of agricultural and textile wastes, sawdust, and oyster mushrooms--may be grown at little to no cost. The proposed geometry allows the bricks to act simultaneously as planters for agriculture, and for air filtration, and soil carbon sequestration. The Mushroom bricks were waterproofed using blown flax oil that was polymerized through oxidation and with natural shellac made from alcohol and the resinous secretion of lac insects. Using the vernacular methods of the Namoshudra people of southern Bangladesh, the primary structural framing for the living structures is composed of bamboo lashed together with jute twine. The bamboo framed structures sit atop timber friction piles. The upper faces of the building are enclosed using heavy-duty bioplastic shrink wrap, and ventilation is controlled through the use of specialty zippers. The building form was based on the functional parameters of local vernacular typologies, then the structural integrity and site specific conditions were optimized using generative algorithms and parametric design methodologies. A rigorous iteration process was used to develop thoroughly studied formal outcomes for Nourishing Dhaka. The initial seed community is comprised of 27 single family homes, 9 bathhouses, 7 communal kitchens, a large community center, and brickmaking/drying/shop facilities. Additionally, Nourishing Dhaka proposes a series of floatable rafts that can be deployed for small scale agriculture and livestock use. these rafts are capable of adjusting to rapidly shifting water levels.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Audrey Speyer

PuriFungi MycoPod, A Natural Aid Kit for the Earth,mycelium, organic substrate, soil, lignin-based material, ceramic, Size: incubator–42 cm x 27 cm x 28 cm; mushroom/mycelium–variable, 2016–present

Champtray de Luxe, A Living Ashtray, mycelium, organic substrate, cigarettes butts, glass, charcoal, 20 cm x 20 cm x 20 cm, 2019

Mushrooms, the primary natural recycler, have a powerful digestive system that absorbs, digests, and stocks both organic and inorganic toxic substances, such as industrial and toxic waste. The contaminants are absorbed through the mycelium, which is the root system of mushroom cultures. As a designer-researcher, Working with biologists, engineers, and hackers, Speyer uses living systems to elevate global environmental issues. Using this co-working approach, the MycoPod and Champtray reduce toxicity from polluted soil and toxic waste using a process called mycoremediation. The objective of both of Speyer’s products is to return life to a toxic environment. It takes four to six months for a complete mycoremediation with several MycoPods, and two months to develop a mycelial ashtray from cigarette butts. The MycoPod is designed for the inoculation, growth, and expansion of mushroom species on polluted sites. The Champtray is produced during the mycoremediation of cigarette butts themselves. Speyer believes that designing with and for nature suggests new ways of thinking that go beyond standard approaches. 

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Megan Valanidas

A Place For Plastics, Bioplastic, Bacteria, Resin, Rubbish, 8’ x 2.5’ x 3’, 2018

Plastic waste ends up damaging ecosystems around the world. This project responds to this ongoing problem with bioplastic objects that are designed to decompose when discarded in the environment. In this work, Valanidas focuses on utilizing soil-degradable plastics in single-use goods and packaging. Examples of prototypes include a beverage cup, chip bag, and mailer with bubble cushioning that are created from bioplastic that can be safely flushed with wastewater. The biopolymers used in each prototype is broken down readily by local bacteria. The components left over are non-toxic and become part of subsequent biological processes.

Experimenting with currently available bioplastics to determine their rate of decay when exposed to local bacteria and natural mechanical processes (wind, water, abrasion), A Place for Plastics demonstrates that bioplastics need to employ maximum surface area in order to accelerate natural bacterial degradation. This textured surface also acts as a tactile labeling system, communicating to consumers that this material is compostable and biodegradable. Biomimetic textures based in fruit skins allow for both outcomes.

By considering bacteria-centered design as well as human-centered design, we are able to begin to design for the waste stream. Soil is the “end-user.” A Place for Plastics plans for a near future where all waste is 100% soil-degradable, where bioplastics are conspicuously different from petroleum-based plastics, and where we design with and for decomposers in the environment. This new waste stream integrates biodegradable waste into our complex modern lives.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon

Charlotte Wenig

The purpose of the bone project is to make use of a material that would normally be discarded. After an animal is slaughtered, its bones are disposed. Since Western society is primarily meat eating, massive amounts of bones are readily available. Through experimentation, Charlett Wenig developed several different techniques to discover the best way to use the structural characteristics and mechanical properties of bones. In her work some bones were mechanically altered, while others were modified through using various chemicals. The ability to bend the bones of large animals that have very complex bone structures is possible  in theory, but in practice it is difficult to accomplish. In cooperation with the Institute for Chemistry of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, Wenig conducted experiments in which she extracted particular particles of animal bones. This allowed her to create a procedure to bend bones and re-harden them into new forms. Due to their complex structural composition, bones treated this way remain stable and retain their new shape even under massive pressure. It occurred to Wenig, therefore, that she could use bone material for protective gear for sports. Most sports protective gear is made of synthetic material. This synthetic material can break and fail to protect the user--bent bone is a better, more environmentally friendly alternative.

From Design and Science Exhibition Cataloge, Leslie Atsmon