A book about biodesign and the shifting role of the (product) designer. Biodesign incorporates living organisms (e.g. bacteria, fungi, algae or cells) in the design process.
′Form Follows Organism′ is about the application of design know­ledge to consumer products and design methodologies. The research questions investigated are: ′how can we control the process of growing materials or products?′ and: ′how can we design new tools and algorithms that unlock the power of living cells?′

“For this project as a student of Product Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (2011-2015), I returned to London to collaborate with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology (UCL). Throughout the years, I have worked with different living materials, and the question I have asked myself was: can we use an organism as a biological computer to create smart shapes?
By discovering materials and processes that nature has designed but hasn′t patented, we can search for new grown materials that are completely compostable and that minimise the usage of hazardous resources which can cause damage to our ecosystem.”

This Hybrid Publishing project received the Willem de Kooning Research Award, granted to outstanding students whose graduation projects and research have helped provide new insights to broader audiences.

Paperback, 151 pages. Optionally, there is a digital version of this publication that enables a whole new way of navigating by selecting words that occur in both the ‘research’ and ‘lab journal’ part of the publication. It becomes a non-lineair publication with no specific ending. By reading them both you will make new associations and discoveries.

Please note: this format is ePub3. In case your device cannot render ePub3 you can convert it to ePub2 using the Open Source program Calibre)

publicationstation.wdka.hro.nl/FormFollowsOrganism_Leest.epub

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