At All Scales
Fabric samples for Normal Phenomena of Life (NPOL)’s Explore Jacket, which was dyed using a microbial process (image: Kane Hulse).
In John Wyndham’s novel Trouble with Lichen (1960), biochemist Diana Brackley conceals from public knowledge her discovery and production of the lichen-based anti- ageing drug Antigerone. Although Brackley is accused of restricting knowledge of Antigerone for her own commercial benefit, it is gradually revealed that her motivations are chiefly political: selling her products to powerful women via a private clinic in order to lengthen their lives and thereby challenge patriarchal power structures. The appeal of Antigerone is clear, but it’s also used in Wyndham’s novel as an example of the power and political values that a commercial product can embody over and beyond its practical value to consumers. Even within a capitalist economy, there are often other forces guiding and shaping how we make and sell products.
So it was that I found myself, one unseasonably warm September evening in 2023, attending the launch of Normal Phenomena of Life (NPOL) in London’s Design District, an area of the city dotted with new-build offices vying for attention in the shadow of the O2 dome. I brought along a friend who doesn’t work in design and who was bemused and intrigued at my insistence that we attend the opening of, as I explained it, a “bio-design lifestyle brand”. She had only a loose grip on what bio-design meant; I an even looser one on what a lifestyle brand was. When we got there, we found a number of products created by NPOL: a series of prints made with algae-based inks, a bio-cement lamp, and a selection of outerwear called the Exploring Jacket. These jackets hung from scaffolding, delicately dyed in pinks, purples and blackcurrants, their colour achieved through a microbial dyeing process. Created in collaboration with designer Louise Bennetts and pattern-making studio Fabrika, the jacket was something my friend and I could agree on – we liked it. Having seen the exhibition, we left with clearer ideas: NPOL was a place we could buy things that had been created using bio-technology and the Exploring Jacket was one of them.
Natsai Audrey Chieza, co-founder of NPOL (image: Kane Hulse).
NPOL was founded by Natsai Audrey Chieza along with Christina Agapakis, but it is also a culmination of a long-running body of work from Chieza, who originally trained as an architect before moving to study material futures at Central Saint Martins. Her earliest projects looked at microbial dyeing practices that allowed for a colour-fast finish with minimal water use; she developed this further as part of her practice, Faber Futures. This studio has, in turn, created a body of research in this area,[1] as well as continuing to develop products and prototypes made with bio-technology. The Exploring Jacket is Chieza’s first commercial offering, however, released as one of the new brand’s “NPOL Originals”.
NPOL is an online shop and brand. It makes and sells its own things, but is also a curated collection of things to purchase from other suppliers and designers. It champions bio-based production as being a more environmentally sustainable method of creating things and, as such, NPOL bills itself as “a place to nurture a new material culture for a planet-first lifestyle”. In the case of the Exploring Jacket, bio-technology offers a production method that uses less water and avoids the use of harmful chemical dyes. Bio-technology
can often offer a means of cutting out the use of virgin plastics, as seen with the long-established interest in using mycelium-based materials. Alternatively, large-scale bio-technology companies are now using bacterial fermentation to turn carbon emissions and industrial-waste streams back into plastic. Chieza sees NPOL as a way to collect and promote these kinds of production methods – approaches towards design and manufacturing that she believes represent more environmentally sensitive choices in comparison to the use of virgin materials.
The following roundtable discussion draws together a network of people and organisations who are part of the world that birthed NPOL. Much like a mycelial network, some of them are closely bonded, intertwined via frequent collaboration, whilst others lie further apart, occasionally exchanging information across intersecting disciplines. Chieza is joined by Ioana Man, lead designer at Faber Futures and product innovation lead at NPOL. Alongside them is Maurizio Montalti, a designer and director of research practice Officina Corpuscoli, as well as the founder of Mogu, a company that makes mycelium interior-design products such as acoustic panels and flooring. Kit Mcdonnell, by contrast, trained as a systems and molecular biologist, and is currently director of communications at LanzaTech, a company that uses bacteria to convert carbon emissions into ethanol for fuel or plastics. Rounding out the panel is Josef Shanley-Jackson of Mitre and Mondays, a design studio that is interested in using offcuts, found materials and exploring manufacturing scales, and which partnered with NPOL on the Gathering Lamp, a light made from bio-concrete.
In Trouble with Lichen, Antigerone is saddled with the dual difficulties of scaling up to mass production and the societal fallout that comes from its discovery being made public. The extension of life it causes results in, amongst other things: a crash in the value of insurance shares; widespread panic at the predicted rise of unemployment caused by an un-ageing work force; and, in response to Antigerone’s original marketing towards women, a reactionary investment rush into women’s clothes shops.[2] Products – even political or ideological products – have practical and economic consequences. NPOL, however, isn’t science fiction. It’s real life, and the conversation that follows shows the practical considerations attached to where bio-based design is now and where it might go in the future.
Evi Hall Why launch Normal Phenomena of Life now?
Natsai Audrey Chieza We’ve been working in the bio-tech space for many years, watching these industry outputs develop and scale. It’s now an exciting moment to think about how we start to implement these solutions into our supply chains, but as consumer products. How do we remove the novelty from this topic and focus the conversation around craft and designing circular products with bio-materials? NPOL is a platform where we can experiment and prototype, with design leading this evolution. So we want to bring in craftspeople who can help us understand how to work with these materials and articulate them beyond the existing industrial narratives. We’re also bringing in storytellers to help us understand how you create meaning for the consumer. How can you make a consumer be part of the journey of caring for and maintaining these kinds of materials and products? Essentially, we’re asking what’s happening in the lab which then affects how these materials are going to live in the real world. It made sense to prototype this through an online shop, but what are we going to put in it? It turns out there aren’t many products that are readily available on the market. So as a design studio we want to assemble the right kinds of makers and manufacturers to bring some of these products to life and think about what they will enable for the user. NPOL is this experimental space to ask risky questions about what is possible with bio-technology, put products on the market and see what happens.
Evi There’s a lot of definitions floating around about what is considered bio-design and bio-technology. Is there a simple definition for this kind of design that’s out there? If not, why not?
Kit McDonnell Oh gosh, that’s like asking a biologist how to define a species. You’ll get a different answer from everyone, as there are different practitioners coming to this from very different places. Even the word “design” is used so differently depending on whether you’re coming from a scientific background
or a design-school background. Words matter. For example, one thing we run into at LanzaTech is whether something is classified as “bio-based” versus “bio-designed” or “bio-manufactured”. There’s actually a huge policy component that comes into that – what certain countries or organisations recognise as such either allows, or doesn’t allow, you to call things by certain words.
“NPOL is this experimental space to ask risky questions about what is possible with bio-technology, put products on the market and see what happens.”
Natsai But I think that’s so essential, Kit, to understand that there’s a regulatory framework determining the conditions that underpin how the field is maturing, for better or for worse. When we were thinking about what happens on NPOL, we asked ourselves: “What is bio-design on this platform?” Early on we decided to focus on materials derived from bio-processes or from the use of fermentation systems. We want to concentrate our efforts on developing the infrastructure and value chains for a consumer-led bio-technology industry that is young enough to take on new strategies to accommodate different kinds of outcomes. If a yeast is fermenting silk protein, that’s a human-mediated bio-technology-based intervention. If that silk comes from a silkworm, that’s a different paradigm altogether. We’re asking: “Do you need a bioreactor to start to scale this process?” If the answer is “Not yet, but we’re definitely going to need that to happen in the future,” then it starts to fit this very niche remit we have at NPOL.
Maurizio Montalti When I started my practice in 2010, these definitions of bio-design didn’t exist. At first I used to refer to my practice as “growing design”. Among the various meanings it embedded, this definition references the generative agency of the microbial systems we were engaging with. Today, when talking about bio-design, you can think about a practice that employs the intelligence of living systems – fungi, bacteria, algae, and so on – to create responsible solutions that let us reconnect with the cycles of a larger ecosystem. I think, however, this definition lacks depth about the key interaction and interdependence among human and non-human agents. For me, it’s fundamental to relate bio-design to the notion of encountering the “bio-other”, to allow us to tackle the disgraceful implications of selfish human behaviours which serve neither the planet, nor us. So, I often like to shift to a definition that pivots around cooperation, such as “nature co-design”, which then embodies an active collaboration rooted in mutual respect beyond exclusively utilitarian purposes, and which favours the effective establishment of symbiotic entanglements among the realms of the living.
Josef Shanley-Jackson I think you get into design and making things, and then you realise that you want to avoid putting bad things into the world. You start thinking, “Well, I’m not going to powder-coat steel any more, or cover it in plastic,” for example. What’s the alternative? One of the things Mitre and Mondays decided to do was work with some of these fabled bio-materials that everybody talks about. What we found was that you can’t access them. You can’t just buy them and start making things, because they’re not commercially available in the same way other materials are. So do we design our own materials? Or do we collaborate with people who are already making them? There’s all this amazing work going on researching and developing materials, but there’s very little happening on the execution side. You can’t go into a shop and buy something made from, for instance, bio-cement. That’s why it was so exciting when Faber Futures reached out to us. It felt like an opportunity to bridge that gap.
Ioana Man I never really use the word bio-design to describe what we do, because I think it’s just design. It’s design based on certain values and principles that centres our impact on the planet, the people involved in the supply chains, and the culture that it puts into the world. We’re quite deliberate that those values should be eco-centric and equitable. We work with materials that reflect those values, but ultimately, we design things. I’d like all design to happen this way, or at least to be transparent about the values that are underpinning its decisions. Those values could be completely different to ours, but we should be honest that there’s always an ideology behind the design decisions we make. We’re not saying that only bio- designers are able to nudge this field forward – we’re open to a plurality of perspectives. The result might be that we end up with more than just a few products on our platform; we’d see a whole generation of people working with nature filtered through their own values, and those shouldn’t be homogenous.
“I never really use the word bio-design to describe what we do, because I think it’s just design.”
Evi Do you feel like you have to work harder in terms of telling a story to get people to care about what you do? You’ve all put time aside to communicate the ideas behind your work; is that something you have to do with this kind of design?
Kit There can be something so intimidating about integrating new technology into an existing system. Examples are the best frame of reference for folks
who are new to this. I’m sure everyone here will have thoughts on what the best objects, products or pieces that can articulate this are. At LanzaTech we’ve partnered with a lot of different consumer brands to show what’s possible. Some of these are pieces that are evergreen and on store shelves, whilst others have been limited-edition collections. Each one creates a new opportunity to ask questions or engage people. Thinking about the work that Faber Futures and Ginkgo Bioworks[3] did when I was there, we did plenty of stuff that wasn’t for commercial gain – creating the first museum label printed from DNA, for instance. There are so many questions that can come from that.
Josef I think there’s this wider conversation happening where people are paying attention to what a company’s values are. I think one of the reasons why people fixate on the word “bio” is because it feels like an opportunity to change the way we talk about things from a consumer perspective. There are writers like Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Le Guin who it feels like everyone’s reading right now, and they’re trying to take that language [those writers developed] and apply it by communicating or collaborating with nature. I think that’s why people love this word “bio”. We’re tied up in this endless cycle of extraction and consumption, and people are looking for a new way of talking about producing and consuming things that genuinely doesn’t harm the planet, and might even improve it.
Ioana There are new ways of talking and thinking about things, but also doing things. A lot of the editorial that we’re now putting out through NPOL, but which is also happening across the board with the writing that everyone here is doing, tends to foreground different forms of collaboration and engagement between designers and materials, but also the different disciplines that need to be at the table to actually make the kind of complex work that we’re all committed to. We need to show rather than tell. I think a view under the hood always brings more nuance about what we put into the world. We start to build a community around supply- chain development and transformation that has to happen as a consequence of putting things out into the world with these values.
Maurizio I agree we shouldn’t underestimate the role that culturally driven practices play. But I don’t think it’s sufficient to consider the cultural part only. I see a strong relationship between the culturally rooted work that I’m developing at a studio level, and the industrial work I’m evolving through my entrepreneurial practice. The two are fundamentally complementary to each other. The studio practice is needed to generate visionary ideas by tackling critical questions that might at first provide for the emergence of intuition-driven and data-substantiated theoretical frameworks. However, in an industrial setting one is obliged to partly comply with the rules of the system that one wants to change, which typically focuses on growth and profit. At times it can feel like a painful compromise, yet it’s necessary to go through that as part of a period of transition. Bio-design shows possibilities for establishing new ways of conceiving value that go beyond the 19th to 21st-century models (i.e. value as financial capital). How can we culturally surpass the notions of perfection and efficiency typical of a hyper-optimised system (which is currently crumbling apart), particularly when switching to new systems rooted in the unique skills and values embedded within microbial living agents? You could say that attempting to concretely answer such questions is both the motivating stimulus and, at times, the headache that one must experience when driving such transition.
Natsai In that way, I keep thinking about NPOL as a piece of vital infrastructure for the bio-tech space to unlock new ways of thinking about innovation, scale, product development, product market fit and so on. NPOL has the freedom to act on what bio-technology companies are working on and explore how this can exist in other forms, not just what works for their current business model. We are bringing the practicalities of how you operationalise the technical and commercial realities of the bio-economy into much closer alignment with culture. You could do the same thing through other forms of engagement and alight on some really useful insights about the cultural implications or the possibilities of this technology. How do these change what it means to be human, and our relationship with the living world? We worked together with Kit to direct the Ginkgo Creative Residency when she was at Ginkgo Bioworks, and that programme asked the same kinds of questions: what are the implications of these technologies? What if bio-technology was sustainable? Does bio-technology allow us to consider new forms of community building?
Evi Why bring these questions into a commercial brand?
Natsai The commercial realm allows us to broaden these discussions and gain deep, real-world knowledge. It’s a critical space to test assumptions and understand better where the levers of power are for the kind of change we are working towards. For example, I was in a meeting today with an established and, some would say, traditional retailer, and for them it’s really important not to lean into the novelty of the science because the science is not the point of departure for their audience. If we’re talking to folks who want to understand the future of manufacturing, NPOL is a useful model. But if I’m talking to my mom, she’s going to ask, “What products do you have?” And I’ll say: “Did you see the lamp? It’s made with microbes.” That’s enough for her to say: “Really, how? Why?” And with the Gathering Lamp for example, working with Josef taught me that this is not just a space for bio-tech companies or consumer conversations. It’s also about bringing in other designers so everyone understands that this is just design and we need all of these forms of intelligence to move fast to implement the change we seek. Josef brought in important considerations around how we design for disassembly and how to ensure all components can re-enter the material flow. What we’re learning with this project is we need more people who’ve been thinking about sustainability outside of the narrow focus of bio-design. NPOL is a space to go deeper in ways that are not always possible for a traditional bio-tech company. What’s challenging for us is flipping between these two domains. That’s why it’s really useful for us to work with copywriters who can communicate in a more earnest way to consumers. We always have to remind ourselves, Ah, the research project is a shop. We have to behave like a shop!
“I felt the need to reach the real market, the one at scale and for the many.”
Maurizio I think, however, that the question here is: How do we define the market? Is that something defined by a certain categorisation of products’ typologies? And within each category, is it correct to consider a limited run or edition as a product that truly demonstrates an effective market potential? For instance, I’m thinking about myself as a designer around 10 years ago, when I was creating prototypes. Quickly, such objects became appreciated as artworks and, accordingly, I cultivated my artistic practice, evolving thanks to the wonderful cooperation with the museums and galleries I worked with. At that point, I could derive lots of value from very few pieces positioned in the art/design/cultural markets, both financially and philosophically. But that was also the origin of my frustration, which brought me to create an industrial company, Mogu. I felt the need to reach the real market, the one at scale and for the many, in order to manifest the fundamental shifts I was disseminating through my work. Hence, the question: At which point does it make sense to talk about markets, and therefore when can a product be really defined as such?
Natsai I think the value of something like a limited edition is to understand how you bring well-conceived products to market no matter the constraints. We’ve learnt that there are bio-tech companies out there that aren’t at a stage where they can even make one kilogram of material. That’s how early this is. But does that mean we have to wait to have a tonne of material before we start thinking about what these things do? We don’t have time. Let’s get it working as a product because it’s real, it can be sold, and we’ve engaged with the regulatory framework of that product category to understand how to put it on the market. Then there’s another hurdle to jump: How do we engage audiences on the value and potential of these innovations? Not the B2B sector, but a wider public? Do we have to wait for 10,000kg of material? Let’s do it with one. It’s likely the outcome will be more interesting anyway, and the incentives that might exist for a startup with investors aren’t curtailing us or our understanding of what’s possible. At NPOL we have material suppliers where scale isn’t a problem for them. We could make 1,000 units a day if we wanted to, but we don’t because there are choices to be made. The products we’ve chosen to make are shaped by other constraints. Are we working with sustainable or local suppliers, for instance? It becomes a false economy to understand value and realness based on size, scale and commercial viability alone. We’ve got to make it OK to also pursue things that are unscaleable and to ask other types of questions.
Ioana What we need to be seeing is both of those scales coexisting. We need these drop-in replacements [bio-chemicals or materials that can directly replace existing products or supply chains without changing surrounding operations, Ed.] as well as the unexpected possibilities that come from putting these materials in the hands of designers like ourselves. So on the one hand it means big, toxic industries can be phased out as quickly as possible in favour of bio-materials, but at the same time we’re not missing the opportunity to bring more joy and create the excitement of new or unexpected uses, which can then feed back into the process.
Natsai Exactly, and the limited edition allows us to get very good at making with these materials. We’ve now created four Exploring Jackets, and that was contingent on 24m of fabric, but also on a lot of lab research. If we aren’t a bio-tech startup, but we still want to make these products high quality, what’s the access to bio-manufacturing capabilities like for us? Who do we go to for contract manufacturing? We figured that out. And we experienced first-hand that it’s too bloody expensive right now to make bio-manufacturing accessible. There’s a huge gap in infrastructure in terms of the kinds of services that designers could access to bio-manufacture products at scale in the future. We don’t want this industry to be curtailed by monopolies, we want to see a distributed model with as much access to these technologies as possible. This will lead to true ingenuity. With the Exploring Jacket, we’re prototyping what a bio-manufacturing system that makes it possible for more designers, makers and artists to access microbial pigments and hone their own craft working with them looks like. Our incentives to continue this work are not tied to scale. We are demonstrating impact in other ways, a lot of which only become tangible five years down the line.
“I’m also wrestling with this idea that the viability of a technology is conflated with its ability to work at a commercial scale. Is this the only way it can manifest? ”
Evi Kit, what’s your experience of this from working at a bio-tech companies who collaborate with platforms or makers interested in consumer products?
Kit From a B2B perspective the aspiration is always reaching “commercial scale”. I think that there’s a techno-economic value that’s embedded in the way that we think about the end goal. Whether that’s through the commercial-scale of production for a microbial system within a bioreactor, or it’s through the commercialised supply chain where we can take what our microbes are making and place it in that market. At LanzaTech currently we’re doing drop-in replacements so that you don’t even have to talk about the fact that biology is involved. For some of our partners the important thing is the quality of the material they are getting, or that they want to improve their LCA [life- cycle analysis] or reduce their environmental footprint. Or they just want to use materials that come from a different feedstock: they could use virgin fossil carbon, but instead they could take above-ground carbon, recapture it and recycle it. Personally, I’m also wrestling with this idea that the viability of a technology is conflated with its ability to work at a commercial scale. Is this the only way it can manifest?
Natsai One of the things that we’re discussing currently, is this notion of how synthetic biology or bio-tech could happen in a distributed way and happen everywhere. We have to think large-scale, small-scale and micro- scale, because there are going to be communities on this planet for whom the large-scale commercial doesn’t register, because the conditions don’t exist, be they regulatory or financial, to make an equitable transformation in this field. It crystallises the fact that the key driver has to be the myriad different ways of approaching this. Right now, NPOL represents this weird third space where we can work with very, very large companies that are able to deliver at commercial scale, but we’re also working with solo makers to try and understand why it’s just that one piece that’s possible. Perhaps it’s actually worth making an object to learn what’s at play. And if you build a single entity, one brand, one umbrella that can carry those different strands at the same time then... you have a shop that holds products demonstrating all these different capacities at any given moment, and that’s a very important repository to understand the possibility of bio-technology.
Evi Why channel all of this innovative research into these quite familiar products and typologies such as furniture or fashion?
Ioana At NPOL we never start with the idea that we want to make, say, a lamp with a certain material. The design briefs always come out of deep conversations with those who are growing the materials and expanding on the possibilities that the material reveals. Biomason[4] could be using bio-concrete to make pavements, for example, and that definitely needs to happen. But because of the way in which the tiles are grown, we’re also able to make a lamp that is tactile, hard-wearing, and can be repaired or taken apart. It’s about asking: What is the material telling us it should be, and what can it bring out in the world? So let’s see what materials we get to work with, what conversations we have, and then new product categories – which we might not even have names for yet – might also emerge.
Josef I think that recognisable typologies are essential. Because these are new ideas, new materials and new ways of thinking. If you can then present those in a recognisable format to someone, that really helps with understanding what’s going on. To present a new material and a new technology alongside a format which someone’s never seen before, that might muddy the waters of how special that thing is. There’s something very lovely about making a lamp because everyone knows what a lamp is. They’re not having to have a deep existential crisis about their life because they’re just looking at a lamp. But what the lamp is made from, how it’s made and the processes and people behind it, that’s the thing they can focus on.
[1] Including the Museum of Symbiosis installation in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.
[2] Yes, I know.
[3] An American bio-technology company that has collaborated with Faber Futures.
[4] An American bio-technology company that uses microorganisms to grow structural cement.
Words Evi Hall
Photographs Kane Hulse