Confronted with environmental challenges, designers are exploring new materials that could replace plastics. Options include biodegradable, renewable, biobased, and self-growing materials. Discover three prototypes.
Digital technologies have brought about a radical paradigm shift, blurring the lines between real and virtual, organic and artificial, tangible and intangible. As early as the 1990s, the networking of the world was compared to the processes of biological development, but as global awareness of environmental issues has become a reality, the exploration of the self-organizing abilities of the living is now integral to pursuing energy efficiency, designing new hybrid materials, and reducing our carbon footprint. Artists and designers were the first to embrace this environmentally-friendly approach, designing items thanks to living organisms and seeking alternatives to plastic for instance.
Marie-Ange Brayer, curator, and head of the Design and Industrial Prospective Department at Mnam-Cci, Centre Pompidou, gives us an overview of the possible forms of collaboration between technology and natural intelligence through three projects demonstrating a new relationship with living things. A special preview of her article will appear in the 5th edition of our book magazine, Stream, which is slated for publication this fall.
The Mycelium chair, designed by the Dutch design studio Klarenbeek & Dros in 2018, is an example of innovation that intersects digital technologies and the intelligence of the living. The artwork, which now forms part of the Centre Pompidou collection, derives from the application of new 3D-printing technology using living mycelium that was first developed by these designers in 2011 as they were striving to find an industrial alternative to plastics and bioplastics. Klarenbeek & Dros are also interested in using algae to obtain new and innovative materials. Traditional production materials are replaced with a living substance. The chair is manufactured based on a 3-D printed structure in which the reishi mycelium (reishi is a particularly sturdy mushroom) is digitally printed in a mixture of water, powdered straw, and sawdust. The mycelium acts as a form of living glue. Once this “living” chair is printed, it continues growing in the lab, through its mushrooms, for a few days. A thin coat of bioplastics is then applied to stop the fungi’s growth. The chair is compostable and this manufacturing process could find widespread application in everyday products.
Neri Oxman, a designer, and engineer, and head of a research laboratory at MIT, has been interested in biodesign and IT since the very beginnings of the digital revolution. With the Aguahoja project, presented in 2019 in the “Designing the Living” at Centre Pompidou, which I curated along with Olivier Zeitoun, she exhibited biocomposite items that were digitally fabricated while also inspired by the properties of nature. Neri Oxman elaborates hybrid materials that are midway between the living and the artificial, designed based on molecular components that can be found in trees, insects, or bones, but digitally controlled. Her research focuses on new materials that could react to environmental stimuli, in an interaction between the physical, lighting, and thermal environment.
Discover the before and after Responsables du projet : Dr. Claudia Pasquero, Dr. Marco Poletto / Équipe du projet : Lixi Zhu, Xiaomeng Kong, Konstantinos Alexopoulos, Eirini Alexopoulos, Eirini Tsomokou, Michael Brewster by moving the cursor
Physarum polycephalum is one of the oldest micro-organisms on Earth. This single-cell organism, which inhabits forest moss, exhibits learning and information transmission capacities that could help us design urban development projects or solve drought issues in the near future. The networks generated by Physarum exhibit actual engineering capabilities. Physarum is considered as a “primitive form of intelligence:” it can move, regenerate, solve mazes, remember locations, and anticipate patterns. It also makes foraging decisions, as was demonstrated by ethologist and doctor in animal behavior Audrey Dussutour’s amazing research at the CNRS in Toulouse.
As part of the Synthetic Landscape Lab, UIBK / Urban Morphogenesis Lab at UCL in London, the architects of EcologicStudio (Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto) will present an unprecedented urban planning project based on the study of Physarum polycephalum at the next exhibition in the Mutations/Créations cycle at Centre Pompidou, “Réseaux-mondes” (World Networks), slated for February–March 2022. Their projects explore a post-Anthropocene reality, where impact doesn’t only proceed from humans but also from artificial intelligence and intelligent systems adapted from nature. The project, entitled “GAN-Physarum : la dérive numérique” [GAN-Physarum : the digital drift] is based on a biodigital algorithm. A biopainting incorporates a living strain of Physarum developing on the map of a city, thereby acting as a “biotechnological” brain. The architects view the project as being based on the “interdependence of biological and digital intelligence.” GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) are an algorithm, a form of artificial intelligence that will behave like a Physarum polycephalum, thereby demonstrating parallels between the growth of cities and living organisms. It is proven that transportation networks are “systems that are both biological and urban;” here, the primitive organism is used for a “re-metabolization” of the city, aiming for carbon neutrality as well as the increase of biodiversity.
Image cover: The Mediated Matter Group and Neri Oxman, The Aguahoja Artifacts Display
This catalogue of experimental materials (made from organic materials and printed by a robot) covers four years of research and reveals the diversity of aesthetics and properties generated according to geometries, bio-composite distribution and manufacturing parameters.
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Aurélie Mossé is a designer, researcher and head of the Soft Matters research group at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Using micro-organisms, she is experimenting with the manufacture of innovative materials that are less costly in terms of fossil fuels or non-renewable resources. By producing calcite, bacteria could become allies in the creation of solid building materials.
Justine Emard is a visual artist. Her installations use AI to understand the living, exploring the boundaries between organic life and artificial intelligence. Bee swarms, encephalographic recordings and prehistoric paintings become learning supports for algorithms that, contrary to dystopian imaginations, generate new supra-hyper-organisms.
Although soil is used as a building material in many parts of the world, it has often been regarded as a waste product in France in recent decades, with little use being made of excavated soil. However, its thermal and hygrometric properties, its extremely low carbon footprint when used raw, its abundance and the natural variations in colour that it offers in every region make it a rich and inspiring material for today’s architects and designers. How can we adapt our building techniques to bring this material into line with contemporary requirements, and get rid of the vision of primitive housing that it still evokes for many people?
La Vie à l’œuvre (Life in the Making), a collective of researchers in the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, was set up at the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres in 2014 to explore interdisciplinary collective intelligence around the theme of the living. Functioning as an incubator of ideas, they explore the potential of living beings, particularly via experiments between art and science. A Stream 05 – New Intelligences article to discover!
A symbol of the industrial revolution, the rise of metal in construction accompanied the renewal of Paris under Haussmann. Its origins in blast furnaces is associated with a high carbon footprint. Yet it is still widely used in facades, and seems promising for circular economy, as it is easy to dismantle. But is this enough of an advantage? As part of the City Metabolism Chair supported by the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres.
Collective intelligence has become key to understanding and acting upon the complexity of the contemporary world. But how can the conditions for its advent be brought about? Originating in PSL, the “Life in the Making” collective, which brings together researchers in natural sciences, in the humanities, as well as artists, has been exploring this dialogue between intelligences around the theme of the living since 2014. By operating through a flexible framework, the collective has developed a praxis of interdisciplinary collective intelligence—all the while establishing new insights on life, in particular through experimentations between art and science.
Discover the inaugural lecture of the “Alma Matter” series! In a world where the myth of abundance is collapsing, this series of lectures looks at what matter really has to offer. Actors, professions, economies, temporalities, geopolitics: how do contemporary issues of creation take shape through those of matter? Each talk focuses on a particular material, and brings together its stakeholders in a dialogue. The use of stone in construction declined during the twentieth century. Today, its return is acclaimed for its qualities: inertia, durability, low-emission processing, local presence… but what techniques and applications will be used in 2024? As part of the City Metabolism Chair supported by the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres.
At its core, the campus embodies an enduring quest for an ideal. Its form is fraught with tensions inherited from a long history that remain relevant even as it adapts to contemporary challenges. Driven by a race to maximize their appeal, campuses are transforming into architectural showcases, competing with corporate headquarters in embodying new values and attracting top talent. Their structures and functions are evolving to meet the shifting needs of education and society. By embracing the archetypes of the agora and the garden—the original dichotomy of campuses—these bastions of knowledge are forming the contours of a new era in higher education.