Bio Design

Bio Design — featuring fabrics grown from food waste, self-healing concrete, leaves that glow in the dark, and DNA that stores data – explores a future that is closer than we think. Designers and artists have always looked to nature for inspiration and materials, but only recently have they been able to incorporate living organisms in their work. In a world with finite resources, design that appropriates sustainable templates from nature is likely to prove as vital as it is novel. • The first overview to address the thrilling new developments in the field • Combines cutting-edge science with popular design: these projects really are the first steps towards a sustainable revolution • For professionals, students and teachers across a wide spectrum of creative industries – design, art, fashion, technology, biology and architecture Bio Design examines some seventy projects. Each is illustrated by texts and images that combine to explain the problems, and how living materials and processes are proposed to solve them in sustainable and pleasing ways. Some of the solutions provoke thought about manipulating life for human ends, from bacteria that can spin pure cellulose for use in the clothing industry to pigeons that – fed special bacteria – excrete detergent instead of faeces, and from lamps that use blood to genetically hacked plants with human DNA.