The PIAO CHAIR is made from multiple layers of fibrous paper, laminated together by hand to create a lightweight yet remarkably strong structure. The edges of the paper are left raw and uneven, highlighting the material’s natural origins and the craftsmanship involved in the chair’s production.
The chair’s form evokes the silhouette of Ming-dynasty horseshoe chairs—an iconic element of Chinese furniture history. The choice of material is inspired by the traditional paper umbrella-making techniques of the Yuhang District in Hangzhou, where PINWU Design Studio is located.
PINWU Design Studio was founded by Zhang Lei, Christoph John, and Jovana Zhang after they met at the Milan Salone del Mobile furniture fair in 2010. Their work often explores how fragile or ephemeral materials like paper can be transformed through skill and creativity into durable objects.
The subject of this artistic creation is an experimental textile surface made from wool waste. By employing woolen fibers and utilizing the felting technique, Biocarpet stands out as a remarkable example of how art and sustainability can intertwine.
The “Biocarpet – Apple Murex Egg Casing” is a groundbreaking artwork that merges the wonders of the ocean with the comfort of home textiles. This unique piece is designed to unveil the hidden mysteries of sea worlds and their natural, often invisible structures through a captivating textile sculpture-carpet.
Our urban environments are dominated by synthetic materials that can feel harsh and unwelcoming. Therefore, the design focuses on integrating tactile and biomimetic structures into the carpet, which highlights key themes such as recycling, biodiversity, and the use of natural materials.
Seeing the bag on the street or in the household reminds people of overconsumption, while also bringing in the emotional reminder to share the leftover food with those in need.
FOODA is a brand focused on food-sharing and the reduction of food waste. FOODA bags, combined together with the application ensure that the food that would be thrown away is transported to those in need. The recognizable design of the FOODA bag that combines two colors and a pocket for a personal message works as a way of overcoming the emotional and physical obstacles of food sharing.
FOODA bag is made of polyester and is waterproof ensuring that the food stays safe even when it rains. When giving away food in the FOODA bag, the personal message can be written as a means of communication between the giver and the receiver emphasizing the emotional aspect of food-sharing.
Recycling is a multi-step process, involving transportation, sorting, processing, and making materials into new goods. It is difficult to assess its overall energy usage.
Economy is not exactly thriving from all its recycling efforts — because it becomes more expensive than ever to process all of our leftover junk. Biodegrapak is a package designed to be ecological on every level. Consisted of cleared paper pulp, flour and starch and biological seeds. After using the eggs, instead of recycling or throwing it away, the user waters it or plants it so the seeds grow into green plants. The main idea and goal is to create a truly environmentally friendly product.
Her passion for sustainable design has not only influenced her students’ lives but has also inspired new generations of designs to embed environmental concepts and practices.
Professor Jelena Matic is a prominent figure in Serbia, known for advancing sustainability and circular design education. Her work at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Belgrade, and involvement in the “Young Balkan Designers” initiative has inspired students and new generations to integrate environmental concepts into their designs.
From 2005 to 2015, Matic led award-winning projects, earning awards, including prestigious ones like the Awards of the Salon of Arts, Golden Key of the Furniture Fair in Belgrade, and awards from the Chamber of Commerce of Belgrade and Ulupuds. Her collaboration with the furniture company Simpo in 2010 resulted in four student-designed pieces entering production, highlighting her influence in both education and industry.
Inspired by Suzanne Lee’s research, Maja began cultivating mushroom-based materials to continue where Lee’s work left off. Through this process, Maja has discovered that this material is not only durable, but also self-sustaining, healthy, and strong. It behaves like nylon and leather but without the environmental impact.
The material thrives in warm climates, takes the shape of its vessel, and eliminates fabric cutting. It grows in 7–10 days with zero waste and can adapt to colder climates with a longer growth period. Initially low-cost, it becomes self-sustaining, with a healthy, drinkable byproduct.
Entry: Free to apply Deadline: August 31, 2024, 23:59 NYC time
We are thrilled to share with you the Global Creative Graduate Showcase 2024, celebrating its 5th Anniversary with an exciting collaboration between Arts Thread, WGSN, and Coloro. This competition is open to all undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate art and design students who have graduated between September 2023 and August 2024.
The Global Creative Graduate Showcase is your platform to display your creative work alongside peers worldwide and have it judged by industry leaders. Last year’s show was a huge success, with 5,823 entries from 117 countries, representing 472 higher education institutions.
This is your opportunity to curate and share your creative journey, from initial research and development to the final outcome. We encourage you to produce a short self-curated film to introduce your work to the world.
Award Categories:
Fashion / Accessories / Textiles
Digital / Visual Communication / Film
Product / Architecture / Interiors
Fine Art / Photography / Craft / Jewelry
Two valuable members of the Next Gen Design project team have been selected to serve as jurors in the prestigious Product / Architecture / Interiors category. Maja Lalic, the visionary founder and president of the Mikser organization, and Isabel Roig, the dynamic director of Barcelona Design Week, bring a wealth of experience and insight to the jury panel.
Together, Maja and Isabel will assess entries with a keen eye for innovation, sustainability, and aesthetic appeal, helping to recognize and celebrate outstanding achievements in Product, Architecture, and Interiors.
A new century dawns and New York’s leading lady, the Statue of Liberty, lies shattered on the frozen ground. Humans lie in tiny pods, plugged into virtual reality with no livable Earth left to roam. A boat glides through dark water among the roofs of once-majestic buildings as it carries the sole survivors of a devastating flood.
Take a quick look at the current canon of imagery depicting Earth’s possible futures and you will find a wide range of doomsday scenarios. According to the movies, novels and videogames the distant future is looking rather bleak. The absence of positive visions of the future in popular media is striking, and quite depressing. It does little to inspire or motivate positive action. After all, how do we work towards a brighter future if we can’t even dream one up in our fictional stories?
There is certainly no shortage of devastating climate news from around the world. Scientists warn that although we might still mitigate some of the worst disasters, others have already been set in motion. It’s important to acknowledge this and the many challenges we will face in our future. But, just like watching dystopian science-fiction, doomscrolling through bad news from our current reality hardly inspires a feeling of hope. And boy, do we need some hope.
VISIONS BEYOND 2050
At WDCD Live Amsterdam 2024, participants of the breakout session The Re-Generation: Manifesting Climate Futures Beyond 2050 got the chance to experience what it feels like to envision a future that is optimistic and exciting. One that addresses the climate challenges ahead, but that we would also actually enjoy living in. In short, the session’s main purpose was to turn a feeling of urgency into agency.
Instead of focussing on the commonly cited framework of 2030 and 2050 climate goals, we were encouraged to think of a vision for the future beyond these benchmarks. To make this less daunting, facilitator Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes gave a short but sweet talk about their work in Temporality Research. They provided insight into their work as a professional who researches the different ways we perceive and experience time across cultures, and inspired us to think of time as non-linear. To connect us with both the wisdom of our ancestors as well as the needs of the future, we need to think of different points of time as more intrinsically linked than a linear timeline allows for.
Instead of focussing on the commonly cited framework of 2030 and 2050 climate goals, we were encouraged to think of a vision for the future beyond these benchmarks.
After a short meditation on time and our place in it, participants were divided into teams. Each group was then tasked with envisioning a future focusing on one particular climate urgency. These urgencies ranged from extreme weather, to disconnection and biodiversity loss. To aid our worldbuilding journeys, the session was broken up into three rounds of rapid-fire activities. Guiding us through this structure were our cheery hosts, design researchers Katy Barnard and Sophie Tendai Christiaens, who were also joined by Aleksandar Velinovski of Next Gen Design and Skopje Design Week.
For the first activity it was time to dive deep into our urgency, to get an idea of the issue at hand and who (or what) is affected by it. As soon as the starting signal was sounded, the group I found myself in came alive with opinions and ideas. We were given the climate urgency of ‘disconnection and unawareness’ and this challenge resonated deeply with all of us despite our different backgrounds. We discussed how a sense of disconnection has an effect on our communities and our environment, and what would be needed to change this for the better. We established that for people who live in cities and spend large parts of their days online, the disconnection with nature causes a feeling of anxiety. Many quiet that anxiety by reaching for more stimulation via social media or overconsumption of (unsustainably produced) products, creating a vicious cycle.
Before we knew it, it was time for the second activity. This is where we were able to shift from a place of concern to a more active outlook: how could our manifested future respond to the climate urgency in a positive way? In this second round, we talked about what we wanted a joyful life in this world to look like.
CARE & COHABITATION
In my group, we came to dream of a world where all-encompassing care is a core value. Care for each other and the ecosystems that surround us, as well as care for our own mental and physical health. We envisioned a world of green cities with plenty of space for community food forests and natural playgrounds to connect to nature in a joyful way. One teammate suggested more legislation to combat the influence and presence of Big Tech, to which we all heartily agreed. Together, we enthusiastically imagined urban neighbourhoods as green cohabitation spaces.
We took a brief break at this point to listen to a Q&A with visionary designer Natsai Audrey Chieza, in which she shed light on the way she deploys design solutions and new technologies with a big focus on local community and collaboration. Natsai also shared valuable words of wisdom when it came to turning urgency into agency. She stressed how important it was for us to understand that our response to climate is cultural. That worlds have ended before, and people have persisted. Her own lineage, for example, is one rooted in persistence despite colonialism. World endings are already at play today, and yet people are rising to challenging circumstances with innovation and resilience. We might not have the luxury of despair, and that is actually a very hopeful thing: we can still choose how to approach this. People are making the most out of really extreme times, and so the future we face will ask of us to be brave enough to move forwards. She encouraged us to answer that calling.
We might not have the luxury of despair, and that is actually a very hopeful thing: we can still choose how to approach this.
Energised by Natsai’s words, we dove into the third and last activity of our session. This brainstorm focussed on how we could get from the present to our manifested future. We discussed what kinds of designs might be needed in the world we aspired to. Thinking about what we would have to do to make our imagined future a reality, my group came to the conclusion that for our specific climate urgency it was equally important to think of what design we didn’t need. The Global North has a tendency to prioritise the creation of new innovations, when many sustainable practices and designs already exist. Sometimes we don’t need another new, shiny design. Instead it might be helpful to return to ancient design, to that which emerges within local contexts as a way of co-existence between a community and their natural environment.
This realisation poignantly echoed Gustavo’s talk at the beginning of our session: the present is connected to our past as much as our future. We need to find a balance between the perspectives of different moments in time, so that we can pull from the wisdom that came before us, as well as rise to the problems of tomorrow.
DREAMING TOGETHER
As each group shared their visions of the future to close off the session, there was a sense of giddiness and excitement in the room. And while each group’s future world looked slightly different, we had one observation in common: the future can only be shaped together.
To create visions of a collective, positive future we’re going to need many different voices to come together in conversation. One person’s utopia might be another person’s nightmare — and it’s important to be mindful of different perspectives. After all, we’re going to need all hands on deck if we want to take action towards a better world — and only a collective, inclusive dream of the future will inspire such collective action.
Those present during this session were able to sample what can happen when people from different cultures, abilities, genders and professional backgrounds work together. I can’t remember the last time I saw a group of climate-conscious people smiling while talking about the future of our planet, and found myself touched by the passionate, collaborative spirit of the participants.
Unlike the fictional, dystopian worlds that can be the work of a solitary science-fiction author, the future of our real-life world will only be bright if we envision and shape it collectively. The future is going to need all of us; all of our resilience and all of our hope, all of our perseverance and — indeed — all of our joy.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a group of climate-conscious people smiling while talking about the future of our planet.
Ever wonder what causes that after-rain smell? It’s a compound released into the atmosphere by Streptomyces Coelicolor, a soil-dwelling bacteria that also happens to produce a blue pigment. Many years ago, it was the discovery of this pigment that first spurred biodesigner Natsai Audrey Chieza to research the potential of microbial dyes, exploring how they could be used to produce the next generation of fashion and textiles. Today, Natsai has become one of the most influential figures working at the forefront of biophilic design, and is the CEO of award-winning agency Faber Futures.
In her latest project, she joined forces with Christina Agapakis of Ginkgo Bioworks to launch Normal Phenomena of Life (NPOL), a lifestyle brand making revolutionary materials for the bioeconomy. Among them are original products that inspire a deeper connection to the living world — think of inks made with algae, garments grown with bacteria or furniture repurposed from organic waste. Through their concept store and platform, they also curate a selection of emerging biotech-enabled brands already making a positive social and environmental impact.
This is Living Campaign, featuring the NPOL Original Exploring Jacket. Photo: Toby Coulson.
“NPOL exists to put biology at the heart of the goods we make, the supply chains we build and the economies we choose to scale,” explains the team behind the project. They work from a deep-seated belief that in order to decarbonise and heal the planet, we need to go beyond choosing low-impact materials and actually harness the natural processes of living organisms.
FROM SLIME MOULDS TO SILK JACKETS
The inaugural collection from NPOL is out now, and features unique limited releases including microbial-dyed garments and artist edition prints. The aptly named ‘Exploring Jacket’, for example, is batch-dyed with the help of Streptomyces Coelicolor, which produces bespoke patterns ranging from blue to pink in colour. Compared to industrial textile-dyeing methods, the microbial process is both spellbinding and efficient: requiring 500 times less water and producing no harmful toxins or pollutants.
Left: This is Living Campaign, featuring the NPOL Original Exploring Jacket. Photo: Toby Coulson. Right: Mbeu microbial dye R&D at the Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London, 2022.
Though the potential applications of these innovations are vast, at this stage NPOL’s products represent only the first flush of fruits from the brand’s collaborations with designers, biologists, engineers, materials scientists and other practitioners whose disciplines have yet to be named. Those looking to read up on the research behind these collaborations can check out the NPOL Journal, which publishes editorial essays and creative insights by leading thinkers like James Bridle and Ayana Zaire Cotton.
This summer, you can also hear from Natsai herself at the 12th edition of WDCD Live in Amsterdam, taking place on 5 July 2024. Alongside fellow pioneers like Dirk-Jan Visser (New Horizon Initiative) and Afaina de Jong (AFARAI), she will share her take on the role of new and old technologies in building a sustainable future. Natsai will also look back on some of her work for other clients like Adidas, World Economic Forum, La Biennale, Design Museum and Cooper Hewitt, and how she advocates integrating design, culture and biotechnology in policy development.
Want to join us at WDCD Live Amsterdam 2024? For more information about the programme and tickets, click here.
Left: Mbeu microbial dye R&D at the Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London, 2022. Right: This is Living Campaign, featuring the NPOL Original Exploring Jacket. Photo: Toby Coulson.
All images courtesy Natsai Audrey Chieza and NPOL.
