Natsai Audrey Chieza is a leading designer, systems thinker, and story-teller working at the intersection of design and biology. She is Founder and Director of Faber Futures, a creative R&D lab, and consultancy that is building real-world intelligence on the applications and implications of emerging life science technologies. In her
TED Talk, she offers a glimpse into the future of a synthetic biology industry primed to disrupt the creation and circulation of everyday goods and services. Her manifesto elucidates how this emerging technology converges with craft and interacts with the contemporary realities of resource scarcity, climate change, and sustainable development.
Natsai is internationally recognised and has been widely published for her pioneering body of work on bacteria-derived pigments for textiles- notedly speaking at TED Global, BCG@TED, Synbiobeta, Biofabricate and SXSW Interactive. Her design work has also gained exposure through commissions and exhibitions at Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Microsoft Research, Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Gallery Dublin, and Fondation EDF Paris.
Executing her critical experimental work through residency programs at IDEO, Ginkgo Bioworks, and Konstnärsnämnden IASPIS accelerated the development of Natsai's works towards new contexts. As design practice becomes increasingly hybridised, new sights of enquiry emerge. This spring Natsai launches the Ginkgo Creative Residency as a curator and mentor, in collaboration with Christina Agapakis, Creative Director at Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston MA, USA.
Natsai is passionate about her role as an educator of Biodesign in Architecture, Fashion and Textiles and has taught on programs at Bartlett School of Architecture, Central Saint Martins, and Instituto Marangoni.
Photography: Faber Futures
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Faber Futures is a research-driven biodesign lab and boutique consultancy, providing insight and immersive intelligence on the opportunities and implications of consumer biotechnology futures.
A sustainable materials and product revolution is dependant on our ability to design and assemble DNA for functionality and performance. This requires a coming together of minds and methods from scientists, engineers and designers across multiple fields.
Through an interdisciplinary network of stakeholders and a strong culture of collaboration, its mission is to embed design thinking into consumer biotechnology. Faber Futures is catalysing innovative and scalable solutions to urgent ecological challenges facing this planet.
www.faberfutures.com
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© Copyright 2010-2017 Natsai Audrey Chieza. All rights reserved. 
Photography by IMMATTERS Studio
Assemblage 001, 2017 | The world's first garment pigmented by Streptomyces bacteria. It relies on a new approach to pattern cutting for in-vitro dyeing.
Photography by IMMATTERS Studio
Void, 2017 | An experimental printing process in the making, where the areas of growth of the bacteria are controlled to achieve a graphic print.
Photography by IMMATTERS Studio
On Scale, 2017 | An exploration into the maxims of scale in a laboratory's infrastructure that enable larger lengths of fabric to be dyed.
As Ginkgo Bioworks’ first ever artist-in-residence, Natsai has explored the microbial strain engineering capabilities of Ginkgo's foundry, and has designed and built custom tools through digital fabrication to create graphic textile prints, larger scale textile patterns and an engineered print on a garment.
© Copyright 2010-2018 Natsai Audrey Chieza. All rights reserved
Photography: Faber Futures
Photography: Faber Futures
Photography: Faber Futures
Photography: Faber Futures
[Project Completion: 2017]
Rise and Fall of a Micropolis is the fifth iteration of the Faber Futures project seeking to establish craft-orientated methodologies for printing and dyeing textiles with pigment-producing bacteria. Here, the design variable under investigation is time: bacteria is cultured with silk textile for 816 hours (34 days). This presents a narrative cycle of life that is dependant on the rhythmic availability of energy and resources. Parent cells give way to daughter cells in a perpetual choreography of feeding and hydration, without which the organism’s metabolic activity declines to a sure death. Under laboratory conditions, competition for resources is eliminated by maintaining sterility in the inoculation chamber. The project is both a direct metaphor of human dominance on the earth’s fragile ecosystems, as it is a serious enquiry into the resource implication of prolonged incubation, and the visual aesthetic consequences resulting from this protocol enhancement. The material artefact produced in the experiment is a site to consider the collaborative performance between the designer and the micropolis, exposing an apparent symbiosis between the two actors.
© Copyright 2010-2018 Natsai Audrey Chieza. All rights reserved
Photography: Faber Futures
Photography: Faber Futures
Photography: Faber Futures
Made at IDEO Fortnights | London - Designer in Residence
[Project completion 2015]
In experiment no.4, the endearing and familiar childhood game of fortune origami has been adopted for its algorithm-driven decision making sequence in this iteration of the Faber Futures research series. Inspired by the impact of even the smallest variables in scientific experimentation, aim of the project is to layer a number of calculated biofabrication techniques that could lead to the emergence of distinguishing aesthetic and design outcomes.
The game allows the player to choose at random, 4 compatible variables from the following attributes: fabric type; media recipe; inoculation style; and fabric preparation method. The 4 variables are instructional to how each experiment will be conducted.
As the designer’s dexterity in microbiology expands, so too do the inventive tools required to innovate this emerging craft. Applying such design-centred interventions to the established protocol to print and dye textiles with bacteria means that a need for inventive tools arises. These tools must be able to negotiate the performative space between creative, material and utilitarian aspects of craft in the age of living technology.
This project was realised during a residency programme at IDEO London.
Watch the full film and
learn more about the project here, University College London.
This project is a collaboration with Professor John Ward,
The Ward Lab, University College London.
Professor of Synthetic Biology for Bioprocessing, The Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, Department of Biochemical Engineering
© Copyright 2010-2018 Natsai Audrey Chieza. All rights reserved
