WILL WE SOON COEXIST WITH LIVING, SENSING MATERIALS?

2023.01.11

In the future, hybrid materials made of 3D-knitted textiles and genetically modified bacteria could turn interiors into living canvasses that can sense and react to their surroundings.

So believe Romy Kaiser, Bea Delgado Corrales, Paula Nerlich and Anne-Sofie Belling. Combining their disciplines of design, technology and microbiology, the PhD students at The Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) are exploring their ideas as part of Driving the Human, a collaboration between Acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering, Forecast, the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. We spoke to three of the four-strong team about the present and future of biomaterials.

"What stage are we at with biomaterials for use in buildings? "
ROMY KAISER: Engineered living materials have gotten a lot of attention recently. The most common ones people are working with are mycelium and bacterial cellulose. We’ve seen both the DIY approach as well as highly sophisticated lab experiments. There is also already a lot of research into potential use cases, including for spatial design – mycelium as insulation panels or building blocks, for example. Mycelium has amazing sound- and thermal-insulation properties and is biodegradable yet sturdy, whereas bacterial cellulose is mainly being explored as a substitute for soft materials like leather.

BEA DELGADO CORRALES: One of the current limitations of biomaterials is their physical capacity, because they weren’t made to be used as construction blocks. But things can be taken further by using biotechnology to modify the capabilities of biomaterials and make them more specific to new applications. This is something we’re exploring in our Human-Bacteria Interfaces (HBI) concept, whereby materials can be used as sensors and can grow by themselves in certain shapes.

RK: Biomaterials are currently used once harvested, or in other words, dead.

BDC: Exactly. What about exploring using them while they’re alive? What about self-healing materials? The building and textiles industries are so unsustainable, and something needs to change. We can look to the basics – to biology – for potential answers. For these kinds of explorations, textile designers need to collaborate with microbiologists and molecular biologists.

PAULA NERLICH: We’re collaborating in this way at the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment [HBBE]. Part of our research facility is an experimental space called OME. Romy is in a group that created a beautiful prototype structure there called BioKnit – a blend of textiles, mycelium and bacterial cellulose.

"What were some of the findings from BioKnit?"
RK: The project was about finding novel solutions to scaling up mycelium construction in a unified grown and complex shape. We obviously do a lot of work in labs with biomaterials, but if you put lab-grown organisms into the real world, they generally won’t survive – they’ll get contaminated and won’t have the right nutrition. But when you look at nature, full working ecosystems have evolved without the need for sterile environments. The BioKnit prototype sought to challenge this by combining biotechnology, digital fabrication and computation to create a monolithic free-standing biohybrid structure, using growth as a construction process. We did pre-grow organisms in a lab, but then let the full structure grow on-site in an unsterile environment – the OME. The 3D-knitted textile became the scaffolding that guided the growth of mycelium into a self-supporting structure and enabled a high degree of complexity in shape. The structure also provided the framework for long bacterial cellulose panels pre-grown into predetermined shapes. To grow right away into one single piece is a very different way to build with biomaterials. Think of mycelium bricks, which are piled atop one another – a very traditional building technique. But since we’re working with grown – and growing – materials, why not use them to grow shapes directly? Working with growing materials has its own challenges – we had to spray them with water each day so they would survive. And because BioKnit was such a big structure, it couldn’t be ‘neutralised’ by baking to stop the mycelium from growing further. Even if it is fully air-dried, it could in theory thrive again when rewatered. This adds a new design element – the possibility of materials being active and dormant at various stages. It also raises questions: What does that mean for our health? What does the material emit, and how does that affect the surroundings? This was an interesting insight into how design methods need to adapt when you have living organisms with ongoing needs.

PN: Loop, a start-up in the Netherlands, uses this amazing property of dormancy in its mycelium coffins. Once buried with a body inside, the coffin gets ‘reactivated’ and the mycelium digests toxins. Rethinking how we use structures, the way we build, the interdependency of living things, the amazing magical properties of biomaterials, the ecosystems they’re part of: all this need to be considered when designing our future built environments.

BDC: Even if you use only one species of mycelium, because it interacts with the environment and people around it, other microorganisms will start to colonize it. What we at the HBBE wanted to see – directed by our supervisors Dr Jane Scott and Dr Angela Sherry – were the differences in microbiological composition on the surface of, for example, the BioKnit structure, but also other material surfaces as analysed in the project BiomateriOME, and how they might change over time. Say you use this technology to build a house – what happens whe­n these organisms interact with the food in your kitchen? This still needs to be researched.

With the Human-Bacteria Interfaces (HBI) concept, materials can be used as sensors and can grow by themselves in certain shapes. This was exhibited at the Driving the Human event.

"You touched on how biomaterials can impact wellbeing – can you elaborate?"
BDC: Allergies and asthma are epidemics nowadays, which has a lot to do with the microorganisms we breathe and our tendency to live in ‘sterile’ spaces – we cage ourselves off from the world outside and don’t allow for biodiversity, a healthy mix of microorganisms from different animals, plants and other species. We usually only consider the negative impact of microorganisms, but what about how much good they do? We can’t live without them, so we have to learn how to better live with them.

PN: I’m curious about how forest-related stimuli can affect human health. Research has shown that the smell of a forest lowers our cortisol levels, reducing stress. Currently, in my own work, I’m exploring certain species of microorganisms that I hope will be able to release geosmin, which is part of a complex scent combination called petrichor – the earthy aroma produced when rain falls on dry soil. I would then create textile pieces, which could be placed in interiors, that can host these organisms and help them to thrive. So far, I’ve seen that the organisms thrive on textiles and give off a scent, but two or three of the strains smell terrible. The next step is to see how I can create a small ecosystem for them, or an activation point where they interact with other elements, so that they can re-create the scent of a forest.

"What’s holding us back from a biomaterial-fuelled future?"
PN: When I discuss with microbiologists what I envision, they often tell me it’s possible – it might just take ten or 20 years. Think of mycelium panelling – it took the creator 15 years just to bring it to market on a small scale. These developments take time, patience and money.

RK: There are also social and ethical aspects. Even if everything we’ve spoken about were technically possible now, would people accept living with something alive that requires care? And since we don’t yet know their impact, there’s no legislation in place to determine how these materials can be used. To take things further, we need to continue to push the research, raise awareness and democratize knowledge.

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▪ Source: Frame｜https://www.frameweb.com/article/sustainability/will-we-soon-coexist-with-living-sensing-materials
▪ Words: TRACEY INGRAM
▪ Photography Credit: ©CAMILLE BLAKE