“Growing a city from the bottom up” could save the human race

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: developing “living architecture” could help humanity survive, claims senior University of Greenwich lecturer Rachel Armstrong, who is investigating how we could grow a city in space.

Visualisation of living architecture by Dan Tassell
Visualisation of living architecture by Dan Tassell

“The world in which our cities are situated is lively,” says Armstrong. “A living city could confer survival strategies and some form of adaptation to our buildings.”

Living buildings could “absorb pollutants and carbon dioxide,” she claims, and even offer better protection against natural disasters.

“In an age when we’re faced with repeated flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, I think that to design for instability is a really powerful thing.”

Illustration of what the starship Persephone might look like by Phil Watson & Jon Morris
Illustration of what the starship Persephone might look like by Phil Watson & Jon Morris

Armstrong, who is also a senior TED fellow and founder of research group Black Sky Thinking, is currently investigating how we would grow cities from soils as part of a project called Persephone. Led by the Icarus Interstellar foundation, the ambition of the project is to achieve interstellar space travel by the year 2100.

Illustration of what the starship Persephone might look like
Illustration of what the starship Persephone might look like

“Persephone is the design and engineering of the living interior of a starship,” Armstrong explains. “This is a world ship. It contains human inhabitants and therefore the interior of this space needs to support these peoples for the duration of their journey, and that could be hundreds, potentially thousands of years.”

Visualisation of synthetic soil on the starship Pershephone
Visualisation of synthetic soil on the starship Pershephone

She continues: “The architectures within this space will be grown from the bottom up, using the soils. The soils themselves will not be made inert like they are on earth – like bricks. In Persephone the culture would be to keep the liveliness of everything. So we will be extruding structures from soils. In some ways I can think of them being like the caves in Cappadocia in Turkey.”

Cappadocia caves, Turkey
Cappadocia caves, Turkey

While Armstrong admits the realisation of such a “world ship” is far off, she believes research into biological buildings and construction methods is important for life on earth.

“This might seem quite esoteric and ‘out there’,” she says. “But Persephone is essential for us because it asks us questions about what survivability and sustainability is on our planet right now.”

Rachel Armstrong
Rachel Armstrong

The music featured in the movie is a track called Everything Everywhere Once Was by UK producer 800xL. You can listen to more original music on Dezeen Music Project.

The movie features additional footage from Dan Tassell’s The Battersea Experiment.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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Clothes will shrink to fit “at the push of a button” within five years

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: micro-robotics and 3D-printing are poised to revolutionise fashion, says the designer of Lady Gaga’s bubble-blowing dress, in the second part of our interview with Studio XO.

Anemone for Lady Gaga by Studio XO
Benjamin Males of Studio XO. Photograph © Dezeen

Despite a conservative fashion industry, rapid changes in technology will transform the clothes we wear, says Benjamin Males, of London-based fashion and technology company Studio XO.

Anemone for Lady Gaga by Studio XO
Early development sketches of the Anemone dress

“We believe fashion is quite antiquated,” he says. “While everything around us becomes intelligent, becomes more computational, our clothes are still very old-fashioned”.

This will not be the case for long, says Males, who believes that advances in micro-robotics and transformable textiles will soon make their way into everyday clothing, helping create clothes that can change shape using small motors.

Anemone for Lady Gaga by Studio XO
Lady Gaga wearing Anemone

“We believe in the next decade we’re going to see some pretty amazing things happen around transformable textiles and mechanical movement in our clothes: we are looking at introducing that in the next five years,” he says.

He points to the ubiquitous use of smartphones as evidence that people are becoming increasingly comfotable with having sophisticated technology on or very close to their bodies.

Moving up and down a clothes size may soon be possible without having to buy new clothes, predicts Males.

“We [will soon be able to] change the fit of our clothes at the push of a button, or our clothes could form new architectures around us,” he says.

Anemone for Lady Gaga by Studio XO
Lady Gaga wearing Anemone

Males is one of the founding partners of Studio XO, whose work includes dresses for Lady Gaga: Volantis, a flying dress powered by 12 electric motor-driven rotors, and the bubble-blowing dress Anemone, which is documented in this movie.

Males describes Studio XO’s Anemone as a provocation and a commentary on the future of textiles.

Anemone for Lady Gaga by Studio XO
Development sketches for Anemone

Anemone is a dress that blows large and small bubbles, the small ones creating a foam structure around the wearer and the large bubbles flying away.

Anemone for Lady Gaga by Studio XO
Detail of one of the bubble-blowing mechanisms on Anemone.

Males calls the mechanisms that create this effect bubble factories. These are small, 3D-printed jaw mechanisms. When they open, a fan blows out large or small bubbles depending on the size of the mechanism’s aperture.

The dress was unveiled in 2013, when Lady Gaga wore it to the iTunes festival. It is the second so-called bubble dress which Lady Gaga has worn, the first one being a nude leotard with plastic transparent globes attached to it.

The music featured in the movie is a track by Simplex. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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Lady Gaga’s flying dress offers vision of how “we may all travel in ten years time”

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: created for Lady Gaga, the Volantis is the world’s first flying dress and heralds the beginning of a new era for human flight, says designer Benjamin Males.

Studio XO and Lady Gaga, Volantis, world's first flying dress
The world’s first flying dress, Volantis, on its first public demonstration in November 2013. Credit: Terry Richardson

Rapidly developing flight technology will make personal flying vehicles commercially viable in the near future according to Benjamin Males, co-founder of London-based fashion and technology company Studio XO, who developed the Volantis for Lady Gaga.

Benjamin Males of Studio XO
Benjamin Males of Studio XO

“Volantis might seem very science fiction,” says Males, “but if you consider the developments in vehicle design, if you look at the trends toward space travel and jet pack design, actually the idea of having a personal aerial vehicle that has to have style doesn’t seem that crazy”.

Studio XO and Lady Gaga, Volantis, world's first flying dress
Lady Gaga with Studio XO’s directors, Nancy Tilbury and Benjamin Males. Credit: Terry Richardson

“Who knows, in ten years time we may all be flying round in Volantises,” he adds.

Volantis is remote controlled and flies using 12 battery-powered propellors. Flown by a trained pilot who specialises in unmanned vehicles, it was unveiled with Lady Gaga at a warehouse in Brooklyn, New York City, in November last year.

Studio XO and Lady Gaga, Volantis, world's first flying dress
Blueprint showing section and elevational projections of Volantis

Speaking to Dezeen at Studio XO’s London headquarters, Males explains how the aircraft is powered by 12 rotor blades and borrows technology commonly used in the manufacture of drones.

“It’s known as a hex 12. It has six arms and 12 rotors. Each arm has two rotors which provide the thrust to lift [it] off the ground,” he says.

Studio XO and Lady Gaga, Volantis, world's first flying dress
Nancy Tilbury and Benjamin Males fasten Lady Gaga into Volantis. Credit: Terry Richardson

The truss section at the centre of the aircraft, to which Gaga was fastened by a belt, is made of titanium. The rotors and her custom-made bodice are made of carbon fibre.

The passenger stands inside a white bodice that is connected to the truss. “Although the machine had to be strong, we also wanted it to have the affordances of fashion. So we made a very beautiful front casing which completed the dress,” says Males.

Studio XO and Lady Gaga, Volantis, world's first flying dress
Volantis hovering above the ground on its first public flight. Credit: Terry Richardson

White cylinders surround the rotors in hexagonal formation and connect in the centre above the dress, which rests on the ground using a circular stand when not in flight.

Studio XO and Lady Gaga, Volantis, world's first flying dress
Lady Gaga in front of Volantis

Studio XO has also worked with  other high-profile artists including the Black Eyed Peas and Azealia Banks, to create hybrid stage costumes that combine fashion and technology.

“We bring these subjects together, in this space – in this quite unique environment,” says Males, who is now working on the launch of a new ready-to-wear brand developing some of the ideas from the company’s stage work.

The music featured in the movie is a track by Simplex. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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These gloves will “change the way we make music,” says Imogen Heap

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: in this exclusive video interview, musician Imogen Heap demonstrates the electronic gloves that allow people to interact with their computer remotely via hand gestures.

Imogen Heap with two versions of her gestural gloves
Imogen Heap wearing the old and new versions of the Mi.Mu glove. Copyright: Dezeen

The interview was filmed at Heap‘s home studio outside London, shortly before she launched her Kickstarter campaign to produce a limited production run of the open-source Mi.Mu gloves.

“These beautiful gloves help me gesturally interact with my computer,” says Heap, explaining how the wearable technology allows her to perform without having to interact with keyboards or control panels.

Pushing buttons and twiddling dials “is not very exciting for me or the audience,” she says. “[Now] I can make music on the move, in the flow and more humanly, [and] more naturally engage with my computer software and technology.”

Imogen Heap's Mi.Mu glove
Imogen Heap’s electronic glove

Working with a team of developers and musicians, Heap has mapped movements made with the gloves to musical functions such as drum sounds or bass notes, changes of pitch, arpeggios and filters.

“What this glove enables me to do is access mappings inside my computer so that I don’t have to go to a keyboard or a fader or a button,” she says.

For example, instead of using a finger to push a fader on a mixing desk, Heap can raise her arm to achieve the same affect. By raising her hand, she can move through a scale of notes, or through pinching together her thumb, middle and forefinger and rotating it, she can apply filters to the sound.

Imogen Heap demonstrating Mi.Mu glove
Imogen Heap demonstrating the Mi.Mu glove

Each gesture-control glove contains a wifi-enabled x-IMU board developed by x-IO Technologies containing an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscope.

These work together with a series of motion sensors incorporated into the fingers of each glove that track the degree of bend and the spread of the fingers. The gloves can also understand postures such as an open palm, a finger-point or a closed fist.

Imogen Heap demonstrating Mi.Mu glove
The gloves can be programmed to understand “postures” such as an open palm or a pointed finger

The latest version of the gloves feature e-textile technology, where sensors and wiring are integrated into fabric. Heap is now exploring how to make further use of electronically conducting textiles, to reduce the number of hard components in the gloves.

Mi.Mu glove by Imogen Heap
The latest version of the Mi.Mu has sensors, wifi and battery integrated into the glove

Heap says they will not just change performance, but the production of music too: “We really feel that they are going to change the way we make music.”

Imogen_heap_collection-progress_dezeen_5_644
The development of the Mi.Mu glove, with the earliest prototypes on the far left

Heap’s Kickstarter campaign aims to raise £200,000 to develop and produce a limited production run of Mi.Mu gloves. If successful, she will make both the hardware and software open source, allowing people to develop their own uses for the technology. “It’s really exciting to see what people might do by hacking them,” said Heap. The Kickstarter campaign closes on 3 May 2014.

The music featured in this movie is Me, the Machine, a track that Heap wrote specifically to be performed using the gloves.

for more information about the technology in the gloves, read the edited transcript of our interview with Heap.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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Glowing trees could be used “instead of street lighting” says Daan Roosegaarde

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is exploring ways of using the bio-luminescent qualities of jellyfish and mushrooms to create glow-in-the-dark trees that could replace street lights.

Daan Roosegaarde at SXSW
Daan Roosegaarde at SXSW

In this movie filmed at SXSW in Austin, Roosegaarde explains how: “In the last year I really became fond of biomimicry.”

“What can we learn from nature and apply to the built environment, to roads, to public spaces, to our urban landscape?” asks Roosegaarde.

Biomimicry is the method of imitating models and systems found in nature to solve complex design issues. One of the biological phenomena that fascinated Roosegaarde was how animals like jellyfish and fireflies generate their own light.

Bioglow-Roosegaarde
The glow-in-the-dark Bioglow plants. Studio Roosegaarde are working on a project to use a collection of these for street lighting

“When a jellyfish is deep, deep underwater it creates its own light,” he says. “It does not have a battery or a solar panel or an energy bill. It does it completely autonomously. What can we learn from that?”

Roosegaarde’s interest in biomimicry led him to collaborate with the State University of New York  and Alexander Krichevsky, whose technology firm Bioglow unveiled genetically modified glow-in-the-dark plants earlier this year.

Krichevsky creates the glowing plants by splicing DNA from luminescent marine bacteria to the chloroplast genome of a common houseplant, so the stem and leaves emit a faint light similar to that produced by fireflies and jellyfish.

Roosegaarde is now working on a proposal to use a collection of these plants for a large-scale installation designed to look like a light-emitting tree.

The element luciferin allows jellyfish to emit light  . Image: Shutterstock
The compound luciferin allows jellyfish to emit light . Image: Shutterstock

He had just taken delivery of one of the small Bioglow houseplants when he met up with Dezeen in Austin.

“This one was shipped to my hotel room and I’m really excited to have it in my hand,” he says, holding the small plastic box that contains the plant. “This is a very small version that we have produced. Right now we are teaming up with [the University of New York and Krichevsky] to create a really big one of them like a tree instead of street lighting.”

“I mean, come on, it will be incredibly fascinating to have these energy-neutral but at the same time incredibly poetic landscapes.”

Swop streetlights with luminous trees - Daan Roosegaarde at SXSW
Studio Roosegaarde’s visualisation of a light-emitting tree with a bio-luminescent coating for its Growing Nature project

Strict regulations around the use of genetically modified plants within the EU mean that Roosegaarde cannot use this material in his Netherlands studio. He had to travel to the US to receive the plant.

Distinct from Studio Roosegaarde’s work with Krichevsky is a second project exploring bio-luminescence, called Glowing Nature, which does not use genetically-modified material. The aim was to find a means of giving mature trees light-emitting properties without harming them, building on research into the properties of bio-luminescent mushrooms.

Glowing-Tree-Roosegaarde-Dezeen_644
Studio Roosegaarde’s visualisation of a tree emitting light in a rural setting for its Growing Nature project

The proposal is to use a very fine coating of “biological paint” that when applied to trees allows them to glow at night. The coating charges during the day and at night can glow for up to eight hours. Trials using the material will start at the end of this year.

The music featured in the movie is a track by Zequals. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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Software advances are “blurring boundaries between design disciplines”

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: architect and designer Daniel Widrig explains how he uses technology borrowed from the special effects business to design everything from jewellery to skyscrapers.

Deoptimised chair by Daniel Widrig
Deoptimised chair by Daniel Widrig

In this movie we filmed in Miami, Daniel Widrig says that designers can break down boundaries between disciplines by borrowing technologies and tools traditionally associated with one industry and using them in other industries, in unexpected ways.

“A lot of technology we use was originally developed for use in other disciplines such as special effects or the movie industries,” says Widrig. “One could say that boundaries are blurring between industries”

Visualisation of Escapism Dress by Daniel Widrig
Visualisation of Crystallization dress by Iris van Herpen, Daniel Widrig and .MGX by Materialise

Widrig discusses his projects including a 370-metre tower on the outskirts of Istanbul, Turkey, a collection of dresses produced in collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen and a series of 3D-printed stools.

Crystallization dress by by Iris van Herpen, Daniel Widrig and .MGX by Materialise
Crystallization dress by Iris van Herpen, Daniel Widrig and .MGX by Materialise

Widrig trained at the Architecture Association in London and worked at Zaha Hadid Architects prior to starting his own practice in 2009.

TV Tower proposal for Istanbul by Daniel Widrig
TV Tower proposal for Istanbul by Daniel Widrig

His architectural background feeds into his ongoing research into using 3D-printing for clothing and jewellery, says Widrig.

“We work with the body in quite an architectural way: we investigated certain body parts and then we applied design processes to populate body parts with architectural microstructures,” he says.

One of these works was the Kinesis wearable sculptures he produced last year and showed during Design Miami.

Daniel Widrig Kinesis 3D-printed body adornments for Luminaire
Daniel Widrig Kinesis 3D-printed body adornments for Luminaire

For Widrig, it is often the experimental, low-budget projects that yield the most new ideas.

“The most interesting projects for me are the self-imitated projects where you set yourself a goal and an agenda and you work with sometimes really small budgets, but you have the freedom to explore,” he explained.

These then feed into more commercial projects, from experimental furniture to sculpture, computer game design and movie sets.

Daniel Widrig Kinesis 3D-printed body adornments for Luminaire
Daniel Widrig Kinesis 3D-printed body adornments for Luminaire

The music featured in the movie is a track by Simplex. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

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3D-printed mushroom roots “could be used to build houses”

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: designer Eric Klarenbeek, who displayed a chair made out of 3D-printed fungus at Dutch Design Week in October, says the technique could be used to create larger, more complex structures.

Eric Klarenbeek_Chair_2_Dezeen and Mini Frontiers_644
Mycelium chair

Klarenbeek‘s Mycelium chair, which takes its name from the extensive threadlike root structure of fungi, combines organic matter with bioplastics to make a light and strong composite material that can be 3D-printed.

Eric Klarenbeek_Chair_Dezeen and Mini Frontiers_644
Scale model of Mycelium chair

Klarenbeek found that fungus grows quickly on straw, so used powdered straw mixed with water and mycelium to make an aggregate that could be 3D-printed.

Eric Klarenbeek_Dezeen and Mini Frontiers_1_644
Eric Klarenbeek with model of the Mycelium chair

“We adapted the 3D-printer and invented a way to print straw injected with mycelium. By infusing this mushroom it acts as a kind of glue so that all these straw parts [combine] together and as soon as you dry it you get a kind of cork material, which is all bound together,” says Klarenbeek.

Eric Klarenbeek_Sjoerd_Sijsma_Dezeen and Mini Frontiers_644
Eric Klarenbeek with prototypes

The chair’s exterior is also 3D-printed, but is made from a bioplastic, against which the mycelium root structure grows. Klarenbeek leaves the fungus to spread throughout the 3D-printed structure, reinforcing it in the process.

Eric Klarenbeek_Chair_Segment_Dezeen and Mini Frontiers_644
Segment of Mycelium chair

“Our main purpose was to find a combination between the robot, or the machine, and to have these two work together to create a new material which could be applicable for any product,” explains Klarenbeek.

Eric Klarenbeek interview on furniture made from 3D-printed fungus
Scale model of the Mycelium chair

He claims the material has many possible applications. “It could be a table, or a whole interior, and that’s where it becomes interesting for me. It’s really strong, solid, lightweight and insulating, so we could build a house!”

Eric Klarenbeek interview on furniture made from 3D-printed fungus
Research samples

The music featured in the movie is a track by Kobi Glas. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

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Wearable technology will “transform the doctor-patient relationship”

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: wearable technology will revolutionise healthcare for doctors and patients alike, says the director of design studio Vitamins in our final movie from December’s Wearable Futures conference.

The QardioArm blood pressure monitor from Vitamins
The QardioArm blood pressure monitor by Qardio

“In the future there’s no doubt that wearable technologies are going to be part of our everyday lives,” says Duncan Fitzsimons of Vitamins. Increased usage of personal health-monitoring devices will be one example of this, he says, making the “the doctor-patient relationship change [for the] better”.

The QardioArm blood pressure monitor
The QardioArm blood pressure monitor

Fitzsimons explains how the current constraints on an appointment between patient and doctor – lack of time and lack of information – can be mitigated by personal monitoring devices that collect patient data over a long period of time.

“When we are ill at the moment we only see the doctor for a very small amount of time. This is just a snapshot in the progress of your illness,” he says.

The QardioArm blood pressure monitor in use
The QardioArm blood pressure monitor in use

“If [a doctor] has access to a wider amount of data, they’ll be able to see how your illness has started, progressed and perhaps is tailing off,” he continues. “That will enable them to have a lot more information to diagnose you better and also enable you to have a more transparent window into your health so that you can understand it better as well.”

The QardioArm blood pressure monitor is designed to be easily portable
The QardioArm blood pressure monitor is designed to be easily portable

For these benefits to be realised, Fitzsimons says the technology to record this data needs to be attractive and easy to use, citing two examples of products by healthcare company Qardio: the QardioArm, which measures blood pressure and the QardioCore, a wearable ECG (electrocardiogram) monitoring device, commonly used to detect abnormal heart rhythms. Both are designed, says Fitzsimons, to look unlike medical devices and use a smartphone as the interface with the patient.

[The above paragraph was amended on 27 February 2014. Previously, it was stated that Vitamins would be launching the QardioArm and QardioCore products.]

The QardioCore ECG monitor
The QardioCore ECG monitor

Fitzsimons is the co-founder of Vitamins, the design studio which last year won the transport category at the Design Museum Designs of the Year 2013 awards for its Folding Wheel project.

Model wearing Vitamins' QardioCore portable Electrocardiogram device
Model wearing Qardio’s QardioCore portable electrocardiogram device

This is the fifth and final movie from the two-day Wearable Futures conference that explored how smart materials and new technologies are helping to make wearable technology one of the most talked-about topics in the fields of design and technology.

In the first movie, designer of Dita von Teese’s 3D-printed gown Francis Bitonti explained how advances in design software mean “materials are becoming media”. In the second, Suzanne Lee explained how she makes clothes “grown using bacteria.” In the third, Shamees Aden explained how scientists are combining non-living chemicals to create materials with the properties of living organisms. In the fourth, Pauline van Dongen called for wearable technology to “transcend
 the world of gadgets”.

The music featured in the movie is a track by DJ Kimon. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers

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Wearable technology needs to “transcend the world of gadgets”

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: integration with the existing fashion supply chain is crucial to the development of a successful wearable technology industry, says solar-powered dress designer Pauline van Dongen.

Pauline van Dongen portrait
Pauline van Dongen. Copyright: Dezeen

“We see a lot of exciting [wearable technology] projects, a lot of design prototyping going on,” says van Dongen, who was speaking at the Wearable Futures conference held in December at Ravensbourne. “It’s really amazing how quickly things are evolving.”

Pauline van Dongen's Solar Wear dress
Pauline van Dongen’s Solar Wear dress

Despite this, van Dongen says that unless the resulting products are comfortable and visually appealing fashion pieces in their own right, they won’t take off.

“It’s very important to stress the wearability,” she says. “I think it’s the only way to connect to the market, to connect to people and to transcend the realm of gadgets.”

Pauline van Dongen's Solar Wear dress
Pauline van Dongen’s Solar Wear dress

Van Dongen launched her womenswear label, which specialises in combining fashion and technology, in 2010. Her Wearable Solar range consists of a dress that incorporates 72 flexible solar panels as well as a coat that has 48 rigid crystalline solar cells.

“Both prototypes have a modular element where you can reveal the solar panels when the sun shines but you can also hide them and wear them close to your body,”she explains. “When you wear them in full sun for one hour they can generate enough energy to charge your typical smartphone 50 percent.”

Pauline van Dongen's Solar Wear coat
Pauline van Dongen’s Solar Wear coat

Van Dongen is aware that there will be significant production challenges to overcome before products like hers become commercially viable.

“It’s important to think how all these new designs can be integrated into the production chain,” she says. “An important next step to take wearable technology to another level is to look at the commercialisation of it.”

Pauline van Dongen's Solar Wear coat
Pauline van Dongen’s Solar Wear coat

This is the fourth movie from the two-day Wearable Futures conference that explored how smart materials and new technologies are helping to make wearable technology one of the most talked-about topics in the fields of design and technology.

In the first movie, designer of Dita von Teese’s 3D-printed gown Francis Bitonti explained how advances in design software mean “materials are becoming media”. In the second, Suzanne Lee explained how she makes clothes “grown using bacteria.” In the third, Shamees Aden explained how scientists are combining non-living chemicals to create materials with the properties of living organisms.

The music featured in the movie is a track by DJ Kimon. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers

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Synthetic materials can “behave like living cells”

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: scientists are combining non-living chemicals to create materials with the properties of living organisms, says the creator of a self-repairing shoe made from protocells.

Shamees Aden portrait copyright Dezeen
Shamees Aden. Copyright: Dezeen

Protocells, as the chemical cocktails are known, are made by mixing basic non-living molecules in lab conditions. These then combine to create substances that exhibit some of the characteristics of living cells: the ability to metabolise food, to move and to reproduce.

Shamees Aden Amoeba protocell running shoes
Shamees Aden’s Amoeba protocell running shoes

In this movie Dezeen filmed at the Wearable Futures conference in December, designer and materials researcher Shamees Aden explains how “scientists are now mixing together groups of chemicals [to make] them behave like living cells. They are able to reconfigure, they are able to adapt to light, pressure and heat.”

Shamees Aden's Amoeba protocell running shoe
Shamees Aden’s Amoeba protocell running shoe

The synthetic production of living materials is so far limited to basic applications – modifying the behaviour of oil droplets in a water solution, for example – but Aden has developed a proposal that uses protocells to make self-regenerating soles for a pair of running shoes.

Shamees Aden Amoeba protocell running shoes
Shamees Aden’s Amoeba protocell running shoe

The Amoeba running shoes designed by Aden use protocells’ capabilities of responding to pressure, and inflates or deflates according to the texture of ground the wearer is running on to provide more or less cushioning.

Shamees Aden Amoeba protocell running shoes
Amoeba running shoe in its storage cylinder containing protocell fluid

Photocells, which have a limited life span, would be replenished after each run, explains Aden. “Your shoe box would be a vessel which would hold the [protocell] liquid inside. You could buy your protocell liquid and it would be dyed any colour you like and you would pour that in and as the shoe is rejuvenated the colours would emerge.”

Shamees Aden Amoeba protocell running shoes: visualisation of protocells forming
Visualisation of protocells forming

The speculative project is the result of a collaboration with chemist Dr Michael Hanczyc of the Institute of Physics and Chemistry and the Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT) in Denmark, who has worked extensively on protocells.

“At this point it is a speculative design project but it is grounded in real science and it could be in production by 2050,” says Aden.

Shamees Aden Amoeba protocell running shoes: visualisation of protocells forming
Visualisation of protocells forming

This is the third movie from the two-day Wearable Futures conference that explored how smart materials and new technologies are helping to make wearable technology one of the most talked-about topics in the fields of design and technology.

Shamees Aden Amoeba protocell shoes - visualisation of protocell production
Visualisation of protocell production

In the first movie, designer of Dita von Teese’s 3D-printed gown Francis Bitonti explained how advances in design software mean “materials are becoming media”. In the second, Suzanne Lee explained how she makes clothes “grown using bacteria.”

The music featured in the movie is a track by DJ Kimon. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers

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“behave like living cells”
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