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Vikas Sethi is the senior CMF designer in Aston Martin. We had the privilege of receiving a talk and workshop from him as pat of our CDC class.
Sethi went through his portfolio and journey as a designer.
Whilst he is most renowned for his work in the automotive industry, his most intruiging project for me was biofabric project for his masters thesis.
This type of bio-fabric is part of a growing field that uses living systems to 'grow' materials instead of manufacturing them in traditional ways aiming for a more sustainable and regenerative approach to design.
Sethi used scoby, most commonly used in the fermentation process of kombucha for his bio fabric.
he made a functional material that could vary in strength, thickness and surface finish by varying the controlled making process.
Sethi brings this project back to CMF by then using different natural dyes on the material, along with different material manipulation techniques like laser cutting, sewing and printing.
There has been other similar studies to Sethi's bio fabrication project, referring to it as ' bacterial cellulose'.
A study by Dheanda Absharina describes that Bacterial Cellulose (BC) 'has emerged as a highly promising biomaterial, gaining attention across multiple industries, such as food, pharmaceuticals, materials science, and textiles, due to its renewable, biodegradable, and eco-friendly characteristics.'
At face value, this seems like a no-brainer alternative to animal based products and plastic materials, so why not?
Well, studies have shown that this could be our ultra-sustainable solution, if it was scalable.
One of the main takeaways from absharina's paper is that Bacterial cellulose could replace synthetic and animal-based materials in fashion, but scaling it economically is the main barrier.
This is due to BC having a low production yield and feeding being costly. another issue is that fermentation is diffuclt to control on large scales, it isnt as simple as making the tank bigger. The variables become more unpredicatble, like oxygen and PH levels.
When i heard about bio fabrication, i thought it might be 'the next big thing', howver theres still a long way to go before i become an industry norm. i think its great that there are people like sethi that are taking the steps to explore and experiment with bio materials in hopes of bettering our planet.
Sources:
Bacterial Cellulose: From Biofabrication to Applications in Sustainable Fashion and Vegan Leather
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