Cells & Organisms
Designing Future Consumer Products with Emerging Technology & Biology
BIOFABRICATE SUMMIT
Production • Experience Design • Emerging Technology
BIOFABRICATE is an annual summit for the emerging world of grown materials.
From yeast and bacteria to mushrooms and mammalian cells, the international attendees
discover disruptive research, and companies, literally growing the materials and products of the future.
I co-produced the event from 2014 - 2016 where the event grew from a small venue at Microsoft in Time Square to almost 400 people attending at Parson's The New School for Design on 5th Avenue.
This year the event will be held at the innovative incubator space, The New Lab in Brooklyn, NY Biofabricate 2017
The Future of Materials & Products
Design Research • Prototyping • Critical Making
We are faced with some urgent planetary challenge, mostly rooted in the excessive use of our natural resources.
What if there were other tools, materials and means of design that didn’t take from the earth at all?
Advances in biotechnology are affording us this revolution, allowing us to explore new technologies and materials with which to create a new physical world around us.
A world where resources will be plentiful again, because we will be growing them firstly in our labs, but later in our studios and homes, leaving the earth to breathe again.
The laboratory of today will become the design studio of tomorrow, where designers, engineers and technologists will design and co-create across multiple scales from DNA & cells to bricks and mortar.
I have spent the last 5 years immersing myself in these new worlds, built with new materials and technologies, imagining the resultant consumer and physical landscape that might follow.
Some of the work is speculative, but the rate of innovation and discovery is catching up and I wanted to be ready with the right strategic questions.
Link out to my old website with more examples here.
More to follow soon.