Imagine a world where biological fabrication replaces traditional manufacture, plants that grow products, and bacteria genetically reprogrammed to biofacture new materials, artifacts, energy or medicine.

 

This world is happening right now. Today, designers and artists have begun to either embrace or rebel against this bioengineered world and as a result, new design directions are beginning to emerge.

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Botanical Fabrications aims to explore new modes of fabrication based on plants.

These modes are inspired by industrial, botanical and horticultural techniques rather than by the alteration of the plant’s genetic code, thus formulating a deliberate opposition to biotechnology and the increasing wish for biological control.

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By playing with the environment of growth of plants and by investigating a new production timescale depending on seasons, it becomes possible to produce without altering, to guide without controlling, to predict without programming.

Imagined in this way, the ‘Botanical Factory’ is able to generate products or semi-products in production chains of a new type. Production time is adapted to the plants’ growth to harvest products according to seasons.

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The project was led by Guillaume Foissac and Carole Collet with the participation of Dr Dawn Saunders, the CSM MA Textile Futures, and the support of the EDF Foundation.