All right. Thank you so much for having me.
This is a fantastic event.
I'm looking forward to attending some of the other workshops and lectures as well.
So we're going to talk about three major influencers in sustainability today.
Of course that's materials,
how they're made and how we're using them across different sectors.
Innovation inspired by nature, so bio-mimicry.
That's a new word for everybody.
I'm happy to introduce that today.
Then this other sneaky human solution that we're just starting to identify,
the leverage it has on how it can possibly affect reversing global warming,
and that's education, and what a perfect platform to discuss that than right here at FIT.
So it's at the 20th century,
it's a century of chemistry with humans making almost 50 million chemicals.
The 21st century, our century is going to be the century of biology.
So let's start with,
well, why are you listening to me today?
So I'm a designer.
I'm not actual traditional scientists coming to this sphere.
I have a gross studio in Brooklyn, New York.
I have had this for about eight years and got into biomaterials accidentally,
and started with hydroponics,
and that was really taking this innovation that could
be the future of how we grow our food in urban environments,
encapsulating that into a user friendly and accessible design
that we can incorporate into our daily lives.
So the natural thing [LAUGHTER] after that was really Bio-fabrication.
That was accidental.
I came across this amazing material that's using a living organism mycilium,
the roots of mushrooms and we started growing with it.
I grow lamp shades from this material in our studio in Brooklyn, New York.
So it was an accidental discovery period getting into science again,
and that led me to getting into bio-mimicry and going further down the rabbit hole.
So let's first talk about biomaterials.
What do they mean, what are they,
natural, synthesized in a lab,
what are the ingredients.
We'll just go through a couple of them today.
What I find to be most exciting right now with
applications that are coming out even right here at FIT,
and that's working with bacteria,
yeast, algae, even greenhouse gases.
So methane and carbon dioxide,
we can actually build with these just like nature does.
So a few examples.
Bio-fabricating materials specifically fabrics,
replacing leather that's not sustainably
produced with ones that are grown in a lab from yeast,
dying with bacteria, and producing or goods with algae.
Even using, I'll go back to that one.
Even using living organisms as a part of our body and becoming actuators,
so changing with the environment that our body changes with.
If we sweat, they open up and to allow us to aerate.
So creating this symbiotic relationship to
change how we think about how we are connected with nature.
Biocement.
So now we're getting into the construction materials.
How we can capture CO2 using cement,
and cement is one of those materials,
man-made materials that actually is a huge contributor towards emissions.
If we could be capturing CO2 passively in our infrastructure,
think about the power that has.
Also 3D printing.
3D printing with a bunch of different materials, bio-plastics, mycilium,
algae, and capturing methane to produce bio-plastics.
There's a there's a company called air carbon that's capturing CO2 at point capture.
So it's at high CO2 output some factories and
condensing this into a bio-material and now
they're contracting with IKEA to make furniture.
So we've come a long way in such a short period of time with biomaterials alone.
So my involvement and what I know most is working with fungi.
We're really closely related to fungi.
That's a fun fact of.
You can see on the tree of life there that animals are
closer related to fungi than plants are,
and so are humans.
So we began to establish this relationship of how we connect to it.
Mycilium the roots of mushrooms.
So we, the fruiting bodies.
So this crazy network,
this mycorrhizal network of mycilia grow beneath the forest floor,
it binds together with the soil,
it cleans the soil,
it connects all plants and trees and an ecosystem,
distributes nutrients, water it's a generous at giving organism.
It's one of the largest on terrestrial earth.
So this is a network in Oregon that is 2.4 miles long and estimate at 2000 years old.
So it's [LAUGHTER] something that's so tiny that you
might see if just poking out of a felled tree in a forest,
actually is just the tip of the iceberg of how amazing this living organism is,
and we're just starting to understand its capacity.
This is the image,
the colorful image to your left or right,
is an image of the internet.
That's in comparison to the other image which is that of mycilia networks.
So if you start thinking about the communication capacity of this living organism,
how does it send signals?
How does it warn an entire forests of impending danger?
Well, rapidly.
Just by using chemical pulses.
So how do we bring this into our lives as humans?
So I started working with this material,
I cannot take all the credit,
biomaterials company Ecovative in Upstate New York and Troy,
was already working with this packaging.
I ordered samples, loved the material,
start growing with it and realized that one of
the best applications in the interior's environment was that of a lamp shade.
So this is an image of the substrate so we use hemp.
So what the mycilium, well we were basically mimicking the environment
that the organism naturally wants to grow in creating a happy little biome,
and the mycilium is going to bind to and digest the cellulose in the hemp.
It's also going to add structure to the form.
So we adopted a process to,
they call the tooling to where we're going to form the shape of the shade,
and you can see there's no white whatsoever in this mold.
Over time, it's going to grow and it's going to fill that form and all the mycilium,
all the white that you see and these lights,
these lamps is the mycilium.
There's no paint outside of that interior color.
But these are all grown and bound together just using nature's glue.
It's doing this by growing and binding together.
So the manufacturing process alone is wrapped up into nature's process of growth.
So it's an interesting way to start thinking about how we,
what kind water or energy or light is put into, or heat,
is put it into our growing process.
So we're doing this at ambient conditions with very little water whatsoever,
and we're just letting the power of nature grows.
We're not adding any energy into the process.
We do bake the lampshades at the end.
So that basically ensures that it won't continue to grow and
sprout mushrooms and what it's for.
So we worked with Ecovative later on to create a grow it yourself lamp,
because I think one of the most powerful things to do is not limit
this desert industries or players but to open that technology to everyone,
and to say that you don't have to be
a scientist to be able to work with these living organisms.
They should be accessible to everyone,
and the more that we can talk about them and explore together with them,
we can imagine different applications,
and we can affect industries at a faster rate including the built environment.
So a few years back at Mona PS1,
the living grew 40 foot tower consisting of mushroom blocks.
So we've got high-end packaging furniture, leathers.
Leathers is the new hot one right now and performance phones,
being able to replace our unsustainable materials,
those that are toxic not only to ourselves but to the environment,
but something that's completely natural and it's going to biodegrade in
your backyard to add nutrients back to the soil rather than pollutants.
That's the segue into bio-mimicry.
So looking not only at just the materiality but the bigger systems,
the process and the design thinking of
how do we integrate everything into a cyclical system,
and I love this quote,
"Nature doesn't make things, nature hides things."
It's pretty powerful, as all the nutrients cycle in one environment.
Note there's no waste created in a forest.
Everything is used and depending on the location of ecosystem like the tropics,
those nutrients are being fought over,
they're quickly being absorbed and put back into the biomass that's
contributing to some other life-sustaining mechanism.
So let's talk about bio-whats as we call it.
There's a lot of names being thrown out right now.
We were just talking about bio-fabrication which is really closely related
to bio-utilization and bio-assisted technology,
and that's using a living organism to create a product.
I mean, any anything that we use with wood, that's bio-utilization.
It's a very fancy word but it's definitely falls in that category.
Biomorphism and biophilic design.
We're definitely looking at the form and the aesthetic of nature and tapping into
our Nate biophilia that we're all born
with and trying to bring that into our living systems,
trying to incorporate more life and the connection that we have with a certain aesthetic.
It doesn't necessarily go super deep into the functionality,
and that's where biomimicry comes in at a deeper level of understanding,
well, why did that organism,
what does it look the way it does?
Has it evolved in a certain way to respond to the context pressures that it
lives in and then managing that uptake human design challenges.
Then the last one bio-engineering and that's really manipulating
the genome which is a whole another conference [LAUGHTER].
So let's look at Biomimicry a bit more.
So looking at the Latin terms 'bios' and 'mimesis',
is life and imitation.
So imitating life.
The next big idea is sustainability is probably a million years old.
So we're a very young species.
If we've looked at the cosmic calendar I know you guys have seen this before,
but this is all of life on this planet condensed to a calendar year.
Humans don't show up to the last minute,
we don't show up on this calendar until
the last minute before midnight at the calendar year.
So that's how young we are as a species.
So all the organisms that have come before us really are living
library of the seekers and strategies of
what it takes to evolve and survive on this planet,
to get along, to create systems that work together.
These words are chosen very carefully,
the conscious emulation of nature's genius.
Conscious meaning that we have intent,
we're going out into nature and we're seeking the solutions from nature.
Then emulation thing that we are going to look
deeper into those patterns and figure out what it means.
Can we find the functionality of it and then mimic that?
The nature is genius because after 3.8 billion
years nature has figured out what works and what doesn't,
and what doesn't has become fossils.
All the organisms that exist on the planet today,
there's a range between 8-10 million,
some say a whole lot more.
So everything that exists outside today is
only one-tenth of one percent of all life that's ever existed on this planet.
That's crazy, that's a crazy amount.
So that means 99.9 percent of life has gone extinct because it couldn't figure out how
to fit in to this dynamic always changing environment.
So that's why we really can use the natural world
as a model of how best to fit in consciously.
We do this in several ways of practicing biomimicry,
we're looking at form, process, and ecosystem.
Just to give you a quick brief of what it is to actually do biomimicry.
So a couple examples is
[inaudible] was out walking in the forest and his dog is getting all these birds stuck to him.
He looks into this and asks why can this bird hang on so tight?
Why can't I have to always cut it out?
What they found was there was little hooks and loops.
So simple, there's very elegant design.
We mimic that in human application and that's how you get velcro,
but the important thing was,
it was understanding and identifying.
What we do in biomimicry is say,
well, how does nature do this?
It's usually a verb.
So instead of saying, "Well,
I'm trying to create a light or a lamp."
You're asking, well, are you
creating a lamp or do you really want to illuminate something?
So it's a different way of looking at the problem and the challenge that's at hand.
How does nature clean?
Does it use microscopic bumps and a structure on its skin to ward off bacteria?
Does it use an osmotic pressure on
the surface of its skin so it can be able to move through soil seamlessly?
Or does it use some physical maneuver that's
built into the actual structure of its shape where it's flinging after?
How does nature protect?
Is it using these tiny little hairs because it lives in
a high altitude to absorb damaging UV light so that the plant can survive?
Is it made from super-strong materials that once again are made at ambient temperatures?
So spider silk is made in place,
ambient temperatures, very little energy,
and it's stronger than steel.
How does nature cycle nutrients?
Something that we're really really trying to grapple with right now as a human problem.
Being able to reabsorb a nutrient to then
shed its own skin or shell and to produce a new one.
We talked about mycelium and how mycelium is the generous organism,
it is spreading the nutrients to those that need it and even bacteria.
Bacteria can create bio polyester as right now just using enzymes and proteins.
We're looking at nature as a model for innovation and this really sums up
the difference between bio-mimicry and a lot of
the other bio what- is its valuing nature and not for what we can extract,
harvest, or domesticate, but for what we can learn.
Are we still viewing nature as just a limitless raw materials bank?
Or can we listen?
Can we learn?
Can nature be a mentor to us?
We're looking at that right now in cities.
Can cities be redesigned so that they're not only
net zero but they're actually net positive?
They are generous.
[LAUGHTER] How often are we saying that in
our language right now when it comes to any business?
That instead of what we're taking out is what we can give out in return.
Finally, we use likes' principles which is
a whole another lecture itself and it's the deeper patterns and
principles that cut across all taxa and what they use collectively to stay alive.
Can we use those measurements as real metrics for sustainability?
Not human metrics but nature as time-tested metrics.
Thinking about the city as a forest,
can you go outside and compare what that forests in that location of
that city 100-200 years ago what it used to produce in terms of capturing carbon dioxide,
building soil, storing and cleaning rain water?
Can we build that into the metrics that we need to measure
up against as we redesign our cities and our systems?
So imagine NYC meeting
the same ecological performance standards as a wild land next door.
These are aspirational goals, they happened.
We have the model.
It existed at some period of time.
So that really is the challenge of can we get back to that place?
Then what I love about it is you have to go outside to learn.
You get away from the computer,
you get away from the classroom,
and you get to start quieting your human cleverness and
looking at a deeper observational level of learning how.
It's really about this reconnection.
So sustainability, we can do
all these different things of creating bio-materials and systems,
but if we are actively re-engaging and recommitting to a relationship,
understanding that we are not apart from nature we are a part of nature,
that we're never going to be able to flip that script whenever we don't change
our mindset about how to live consciously and connected.
The final thing I want to talk about,
and this is a really new subject for me and I feel it's very relevant in this platform,
and that's a power that education has in sustainability.
So Paul Hawken, a couple of years back organized much of scientists, entrepreneurs,
researchers from all around the world and they compiled
a hundred of the most effective strategies to
combat global warming that are happening right now or in the near future.
They extrapolated all of these different strategies over the next 25,
50 years and then measured them.
They found some surprising results.
Women and girls specifically educating girls took up a huge bite of all that.
You see materials is the purple, the purple block,
and then you've got women and girls as
its larger section and that wasn't really a big surprise.
We're constantly thinking that innovation, and systems,
and materials, food, transportation all those things are vitally important,
but information flows and having accessibility to information to
empower and change the perspective and give opportunity.
I think having different opportunities and more informed choices.
So as we're looking at this,
I realized that educating women and girls all over the world,
they're more effective stewards of food,
soil, trees, and land-use.
They had a greater capacity to cope with
shocks from natural disasters and extreme weather.
They were more likely to have a positive effect
on any of the extremes that are about to transpire,
and they could plan ahead.
I think it's interesting that materials,
alternative cement, bio plastics are really high up on the list for materials.
Their number 36 and 47 and education was number six right after solar and wind.
So that's how powerful this can be of just transferring information.
To understand where we're at,
we really have to look at where we've come from,
and that's not only physically but historically and culturally.
I think the best thing is that we're realizing our power and we're sharing information.
We're sharing information whether it's in the board room,
or the classroom, or on the streets.
Information flows, and being able to
have access to that is one of the most powerful things right now that we're just
starting to be able to measure in terms of what that can do for reversing
global warming and our sustainability efforts.So I'll leave you with this.
You cannot go there a single day without having an impact on the world around you.
What you do makes a difference,
and you have to decide what difference you want to make.
This is by Jane Goodall.
I take this as a responsibility,
and I think now that we've all heard a lot of this information,
the responsibility has now been passed and now to
share with somebody else and to keep those information flows continuous.
It's been a real pleasure to be able to speak about
these things and I hope that you share them.
Thank you very much for your time.
[APPLAUSE]
