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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For Daniel Buren, architecture is an open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his site-specific work, where art and architecture meet, just like the Nuages Colorés that cover the scales of the 175 Haussmann glass roof.
Through animation, installation, sculpture and painting, Victor Cord’homme reveals the complexity and tireless workings of an urban system over which humans are losing control. He works on the autonomy of his installations and exhibitions, whose behavior varies according to the audience, invited to interact yet powerless to do so.
Marie-Sarah Adenis is a designer and co-founder of PILI, a company that develops biocoloring agents using microorganisms: an alternative to their petrochemical production. But the heart of her job is to harness the image of “microbes” to overcome the limitations of our imaginations and inject a touch of onirism into the dusty scientific narrative inherited from Pasteur.
Stripes, banners and colored filters are all part of the signature of renowned artist Daniel Buren. His work is rooted in the landscapes and architectures that welcome him and have become his open-air studio. In an exclusive interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he talks about his attraction to transparency and his many collaborations. Discover Les Nuages Colorés, which cover the glass roof of 175 Haussmann with shimmering lights.
Mathieu Arnoux, Professor at the University of Paris and Director of Studies at the EHESS, Isabelle Bensidoun, economist at the CEPII, Vincent Charlet, economist and founder of the Fabrique de l’Industrie and Liliana Doganova, sociologist and researcher at the CSI des Mines de Paris. This concluding conference looks at the social and economic dynamics associated with the exploitation of materials on a national and global scale. The war in Ukraine has revealed our dependence on our neighbours and reopened questions of sovereignty and self-sufficiency. France has been less affected by the Russian gas embargo than Germany, but the transition to renewable energies will not happen without the rare earths that we import mainly from China. The limits of globalisation seem to have been reached. What does this mean for our industry, our sectors and our economic policy? What role will the markets play, particularly the carbon market, in encouraging national and European materials?