Welcome to Fritz Hansen in Conversation. My name is Ben Katford, and with me today is visionary designer and thought leader Natsai Audri Chiesa. Natsai is the founder and CEO of Faber Futures and a co-founder of Normal Phenomena of Life. Launched in 2018, Faber Futures is a pioneering design agency that melds consumer biotechnology advancements with real-world applications. In 2023, Natsai co-founded NPOL, a consumer brand offering biotech products online. Her approach involves establishing partnerships across biotech consumer sectors and cultural institutions with notable clients and partners, including Ginkgo BioWorks, Adidas, and the World Economic Forum. Natsay, welcome to the program.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for having me, Ben.
SPEAKER_00Natsai, when I think about this overall theme, a space for bold ideas, uh, biology and particularly the innovation associated with it really does come directly to mind. And I just wondered, was there a particular moment in your journey that you suddenly felt compelled to be a part of the field of biodesign? Can you remember that?
SPEAKER_01It's a good question. I studied architecture in a very sort of traditional context up in Edinburgh. But I was always looking sort of over my shoulder to see what else was happening in design. And I think I was a bit of a fashion design obsessive at the time. So I used to spend all my budget for architectural books on fashion magazines. Because I was interested in this like cross-disciplinary like translation of design, that it didn't have to exist through uh built environment alone, and that these things were really in parlay with one another. Um so I finished up at Edinburgh and then headed down to CSM, Central St. Martin's, um, and I took a course there called Material Futures. At the time it was called textile futures. Um and I and I knew, right, from if we want to get deep into the theory of architecture, the first architect, um, so the first architecture uh were wall hangings made out of textiles, right? So there was this very clear translation that I was making in going to a course that sort of demanded, you know, this rigor around the confluence of materiality, culture, and technology. Um, and and I knew that architecture was a modality in that one of scale, but that it wasn't the thing. The thing was the material and how it arrives at us, right? Um, and because of the technological interplay on this course, I found myself really interested in an emerging discipline in science, uh, synthetic biology, which was all about designing at a molecular level how DNA functions and in the context of industrial biology, how it can and is going to enable us to transition from fossil fuel-based materials to biobased materials. And so I was, you know, kind of starting to listen in on some of these conversations scientists and technologists were having about the potential of these emerging tools and technology that would make it easier for us to read and write DNA. And they were very much using the language of design. In fact, um they were calling themselves designers, and I found this super exciting because I thought that means we must collaborate. You understand design at a molecular level. Um, and and my training is the sort of the macro effects of, right? Whether it's the material or you know, the implications of uh designs on a built environment for a whole population. Um and I saw these things as being intrinsically connected. But I think that the problem was, and in many ways still remains, that the full integration of design and the technology is still emerging. And so I founded the studio um maybe after seven years in the wilderness building my practice in in biodesign, because it was the right time to sort of communicate back across this value chain. That the thing that does hold all of this together, the technology, the policy, the implementation, is actually systems design. Um so Faber Futures, um I established that in 2018, primarily to be that driver, to develop the language, the frameworks, the ways of working across this value chain to start to enable closer dialogue between these disciplines that absolutely need each other for their survival. Um, and yeah, we've been we've been doing that ever since.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a there's a lot to unpack there. It's such a remarkable um journey that you've been on. I I wondered if we go all the way back to the start. You grew up in Zimbabwe, and I recall you saying that already at the age of 11 you kind of took an interest in wanting to become an architect. I just wondered what it was back then that piqued your interest, or what was your understanding of architecture and design at that early stage?
SPEAKER_01Um, it's it's a good question. I think I have a very boring answer, in that it was just pro pragmatic in many ways, um, because I I was very artistic as a child. Um, and as you go through your education, you you you you're always having to sort of hone in on your strengths, and they start, it starts to matter, right? Which subjects you take, um, which school you want to go to. And so I think by the time I was 11 that meant just being a little bit clear about which school I was going to go and to and which subjects I was going to explore. Um, and I couldn't say art is my thing. I couldn't because um I was, you know, coming from a, you know, I was born in 1985, which is five years after independence. Um and we were the born free, right? We'd fought a war, we gained our independence. I was born five years later. So I think the mentality of our parents was very much get a professional job because actually it's yours for the taking. And so the idea of saying, I'm going to become an artist was like, and so I think I knew instinctively from a really early age that I couldn't focus on on that piece because that's not going to fly within the cultural domain that I'm operating in. Um, but my dad had uh a best friend who was an architect, so I was just like, I'll be an architect. And that, you know, he was like, that's excellent, excellent choice. And he sort of is to this day says, you know, that's an that's a profession, so that's fine. Except now it's it's a little bit more ambiguous for my parents, isn't it? Or what is it exactly that you do? Do you have a real job? Um, but yeah, if essentially it was um reading the room and knowing that I would get the most out of my talents through um architecture and that it would cause the least friction within a cultural setting where professional um a professional path was like that's what you do with your independence. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So how was it for you then when your family moved to the UK when you were 17? That's a very, you know, uh that's a difficult stage to uproot your life and to, you know, re-establish yourself. How was that for you personally, away from your interests in potentially pursuing a career in architecture? I mean, just from an identity perspective.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I was excited. I mean, you you're you you know, when you when you you know Zimbabwe was colonized by the Brits, and so so much of our culture and um heritage is intertwined. It's not exotic to to end up in the UK. In fact, it's almost like there's an inevitability to it for so many people, whether it's studying or family reunification, um, since so many of you know my parents' generation um moved to the United Kingdom to to study when they were young kids. So there was a sense of full circle going back to this place that has always been part of our um sense of identity somehow. I mean, my dad studied um in the UK at university level, so that and we had cousins and uh family, etc. So it it it it it was almost like fulfilling this thing that you would have maybe told friends. Well, one day we're moving to the UK, and then you do it. It was a very exciting thing to do. Um and in many ways, the first couple of years of that um felt like a continuation of life in Zimbabwe. Um, the same exams, uh the same curriculum. And then I think university, that's when you start to realize that the aperture is much wider. Uh, and I think that's where I had my first culture shock, to be fair. Um, because then you start to see you know bits and pieces of the British psyche at play in a different way, like the class dynamics of a of a nation really come to the surface once you're in a much wider pool of um people, and I think I struggled a little bit with um with that, but also architecture's framing uh in this context. Uh I mentioned earlier that it felt quite traditional. Um and I don't know what it's like now, but it it it felt like it was not um certainly my experience was it was very narrow, what architecture could be. Um and and so it felt like a closing-in of sorts, and maybe that's why I was interested to know what all the cool kids in East London were doing at the time, because that felt rebellious. Um, and I think in my practice I was I was looking for that rebellion, the the the the the weird piece that people weren't necessarily working on or finding interesting, and um maybe I made life hard for myself, but I think I've always been a kid who was doing slightly different things to what was happening. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I'm guessing there weren't many others that would dare do their final dissertation on the relationship between architecture and fashion, for example. What did you find as part of that study? I'm just very curious how those two interacted.
SPEAKER_01Uh do I remember? Okay, um, gosh, deconstructivism, that's what my thesis was about. And it was looking at the deconstructivists in the 90s and fashion and how that um uh what what was happening at the same time in architecture, so your Zaha deeds and uh I think I learned um a lot about yeah, it's funny, rebellion, right? Um that's what underpins all of their practices is operating outside of the norm. And maybe because they are, you know, whether it was Margiella looking at found materials to construct a new and to articulate a different material and aesthetic vocabulary that that comes up as a result, uh, and the Milomista, who, you know, pioneered a very distinct uh approach to fashion with its minimalism, but also in many ways because of the textual aspects of the material maximalism, but a quiet, muted way. So these amazing, for me at least, those designers represented this beautiful juxtaposition that you could see mirrored in in architecture. Uh, but uh yeah, I I don't I I don't know that I can go too deep into that because I don't quite remember.
SPEAKER_00No, I mean it it's for me really interesting the fact that you're just pushing against the constraints or the perceived kind of trajectory of what it means to be an architect even at that early stage.
SPEAKER_01Um if I might say one thing that did really matter when I was doing my thesis was um construction. Uh right, so the the garment construction and what it means to to pattern cut in a very specific way um to build the architecture of the body. Uh I I was a novice at this, but you know, I gave it a go because I was trying to understand through making what what that relationship to uh between what is what the relationship between architecture and fashion was. And and I didn't realize it at the time, and maybe it's only surfacing now that we're having this conversation, but that segue to material futures was all about learning by doing. Um it was very disorienting because whereas in architecture you had a design brief at the start of a project. You are going to design a school. Uh, here is the site, here are the you know, cultural conditions, etc. Material futures was completely different. It was a very loose brief, open-ended, but you had to work through it through material inquiry, which basically means you know, you you didn't know what you were doing, you were learning by doing it. Um, and and you were adding and building vocabulary around it and contextualizing it by making. And I think in many ways that's been my journey ever since, you know, especially with with living systems, um, where there's no blueprint about how we design with nature. It's such an emergent strategy. So um I don't know how it connects totally to your original question, but I think there's a thread around um on one hand, there are clear overlaps between fashion and architecture, but then how you surface those is a function of theory, but it was also very practically what is construction, what is scale, um, how does material interface with that? Uh, and and that you could only really answer it through the practical module by trying to make and then and then writing about it.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned this term material futures. Can you explain a little more about that to the layperson?
SPEAKER_01Sure, and I mean I mentioned it because textile futures was the original name of the course, and then um they they rebranded and it became material futures.
SPEAKER_00Was this with Professor John Ward?
SPEAKER_01No, this was with uh this was at Central St. Martin's. Um our course director at the time was Caroline Till, uh, who uh is now at Tilt or Franklin Till now Tilt, um, and Carol Collet, who was um very much at the helm, and amazing tutors, uh Kate Goldsworthy, who were who were really in their own practices and then together and with the cohort, redefining what textiles were. Um very gendered subject uh area, uh, and because of its rootedness to craft arts and craft. Um, and yet what they saw is is is that the the trajectory for textiles has always been connected with uh technological futures. Um textile industry has shaped industrial revolution uh since time immemorial. And so people like Carol Callet, uh who who ran the course, were sort of pushing for the school at the time to have a digital lab because she understood that digital technology was going to fundamentally change how we think about textiles. So she, you know, she had a digital lab, only it was a shed that she built herself and stuck into the studio and put all of the tools and you know, folks would have their tutorials around there. Um, it was also Carol Collet who um, through this lens of material futures, understood that biology is going to do the same thing. And she is the reason why Central St. Martin's has MA biodesign and a proper functioning lab to be able to do that work. Massive game changer to bring that infrastructure into the arts institution. Whereas when I was studying, you had to find a very kind John Ward over at UCL to allow you into his domain, which is a completely different sort of um structure to be able to do research. Um, you know, good things come out of that, but also uh it helps to have your own kit um in your own domain to be able to really push things, right? Um, and and now Carol Killet is pushing regenerative design uh at Central St. Martin's. And so the the reason why I name her specifically is because my understanding of um material futures, she's sort of embodied that. It was she was always thinking about what's the next thing our students need to have um you know strong capabilities in. And it's always cross-disciplinary, it's always um, you know, looking at how design helps to make meaning of, it helps to integrate, um, it helps to bring together stakeholders around these systems uh and for the benefit that they produce, this is very important to institutionalize that kind of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00Using a design perspective, a design language or framework to approach things, is that something that had been already being used in textile innovation from day one, or is that something that you've kind of been able to adopt in your practice?
SPEAKER_01I think design and and textile innovation are intrinsically connected and always have been. Um, you know, when you look at the Bauhaus and the textile designers who were making incredible work at the time, were also grappling with questions around craft scale, uh industrial scale manufacturing of things. Um and in a way, I think what has always interested me about textiles was the possibility that design leads that inquiry and starts to unlock different ways of making as a result. So from my personal experience, I I take my design hat into a scientific lab, and um, you know, um I'm not asking a scientific question, I'm asking a design question, and and uh the answer lands when the science is able to sort of bring in um methodologies and frameworks to try and you know deal with that question.
SPEAKER_00Is there an advantage? I was wondering in approaching this conversation, is is there an advantage to you coming at this from somewhat of an outsider's perspective because you don't have the traditional biologic, you know, biologies student background? Yeah. Um I just wonder how that then changes the way that you can approach problem solving.
SPEAKER_01So when I graduated from CSM, um my thesis had been around the cultural implications of emerging biotechnologies, um, insofar as they were distributed and people had access to these tools. What kind of speculative futures can we start to articulate about what that makes possible? Um and I realized quite early on that although speculative design was an interesting way to ask these questions, it felt like it ended at questions or more questions. I wanted to progress by doing the work. Um so I took a very practical approach and um reached out to a synthetic biologist at UCL, Professor John Ward, and just asked him if I could uh hang out. And it was hanging out because there was no way of me doing a PhD, because that framework didn't exist, because I wasn't a scientist. And likewise, I couldn't do a PhD on the sciences at CSM because we just weren't there yet. I think things have changed. Um, so it was a very informal arrangement that I had uh with John where I could come in and build projects. Uh, we shared a bench and he gave me a pass and he taught me a few basic protocols, um, and I started to work with microbes that produce pigments. Um and the way that I worked with them as somebody who does not have a background in biology was very material and design led, very intuitive. Um and also quite radical because rather than try. Trying to make the microbes do the things that I knew that we might want to achieve in textile finishing, like screen prints or uniform dyes, because that's what the market requires. I kind of just developed this practice of listening and observing to see what the microbes liked and what they were good at, and then shifting that design toolkit to respond to the microbial world as opposed to industrial logics of design. So it's interesting, right? Because on one hand, design is leading in the lab in that intuitive, creative way, but actually the organism is leading the designer because there are just these amazing limits that nature is imposing in that design process. So it was, I think, a constant push and pull between those domains. Sometimes I needed a scientist to be able to troubleshoot and for me to understand at a much deeper level what's actually at play. And then other times you want to get out of the lab and go to a museum and you know plug into everything that makes you get up every morning because you're a designer. You know, long story short, I think that design is coming into that environment as a non-expert. Um, that's when a radical shift can happen if there are the right infrastructures to carry that kind of approach to make um different and new things happen. But my work is purely collaborative. No single actor can act alone in in you know the kind of project spaces that we we have. And I think for me, that's why it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00How much do you see your role, be it with Favor Futures or as part of the council at um the World Economic Forum, to to agitate for change or to at least um shake up the status quo within some of these kind of um legacy industries?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's funny because um, you know, people talk about activist designers a lot, and I I think what has always been clear to me, especially because you know, I graduated really at that time where speculative design loomed large. So I just wanted to show by doing, um, having that proof of work to be able to point at something and say, wouldn't that be nice? Um and it's funny, right, because when you're pointing at the finished thing and you're saying, Wouldn't this be nice? Everyone's like, oh yes, actually it would. But the real work is in making it happen. And so agitating for me looks like building relationships with people across as many different domains as possible, and always looking at opportunities that come our way in a very strategic way, um, which oftentimes means it's not about me. It's actually about these two people knowing that the thing that they're working on, they would benefit from each other. Because actually, if they succeed, then it makes my job of show and tell much easier. Um, so it it I think has just really engendered um a very open, collaborative way of of thinking because ultimately there is a goal, how you get there oftentimes doesn't matter as long as you can take people with you, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you talk about um this idea of being able to perhaps even agitate for change through doing and being so you know hands-on and constructive in that sense. I wondered the exploring jacket when that was created, did that feel for you like a real milestone?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was full circle. I'd been working on um that long arc of RD since 2011. And when we first started, it was on a five-centimeter Petri dish. And I I still remember when I'd spent a year basically trying to grow microbes and to isolate pigment from them so that you you could have an isolate that acts in the exact same way as um traditional uh dyes do, and it just wouldn't work, not with this organism anyway, right? Um, and then a year later I was chatting with John, and you know, we were like, well, it's we just need to be a bit more radical about this. And so the next experiment was to grow the microbes directly onto the textile. Um, and and I did that experiment in a five centimeter Petri dish or 10 centimeter petri petri dish. It matters because what happens on a 10 centimeter Petri dish versus 15 versus 20, radically different things start to happen. Right. Um, because what you're dealing with is scale and microbial, the the microbial life cycle, um the larger something gets, the more unruly and unpredictable things become. So to be able to move from that scale to a jacket, um, the amount of R ⁇ D that has been built into that, uh you know, we're talking at that point we were doing experimentation in 250 mil bioreactors. They're like um these, I'm like beautiful, because I'm a nerd, these beautiful vessels that that you ferment microbes in. Um, and typically you you want to see what happens when you shift from 250 mils to something a bit bigger, one liter, five liters. That's a big milestone to be able to ferment five liters of these microbes to produce pigments. Um and if you can do it at five liters and everything's tickety-boo, that means you can start to predict that you can do it at 25,000 litres. So the five-liter mark is such an important milestone in of itself. We took that biomass from the five litres, and it was just enough biomass to dye about 25 meters of fabric, which could make four jackets. So it's a jacket, but for me, it's like all these years worth of research, network building, field-defining, you know, um activities. And we finally had the opportunity to translate um not just into a jacket, but designed by a you know, a designer who I admire. Um, the team poured hours of work into what is the purpose of this jacket? It's called the exploring jacket. It's got this beautiful musette in the front that unclips because you're supposed to be able to go into the forest with it and collect some mushrooms, put it in the musette. You know, total full circle moment. Um, so I'm I'm very proud of it because it means it means a lot. And you know, I could put that project to bed now and say, I did it. I I reached a point where I can prove that this is a system that works from a technical perspective, and that we've we've we're going to have to get good at crafting with it. And that's an amazing place to find ourselves because I think now industry is waking up to, you know, these things are possible. How do we get good at it? How does it interact and interface with brand identity, legacy, um, our future direct uh trajectory, who we want to be in a hundred years' time. Um and I think these are the sort of the design questions that I find so exciting to be able to take into the lab, right? Because those questions are not like, oh, we're so happy we got material and now we're going to turn it into something. You know, my thesis is that industry should be at the call face of RD. Otherwise, we just risk waiting for commodity materials all over again without much creativity. If industry can align and be upstream with the technologists, then what you have is a brand building a brief for technologist and really starting to push what's possible. And I feel that that's what that jacket does. It's it brings all of the things that we care about, fair supply chains, you know, this jacket was made in the UK, um, pretty much everything, um, apart from the silk, which was um made to order uh from a um really wonderful producer in India. You know, we we try to build in what does it look like if we get this right, but like all parts of this. So the show and tell piece is like, let me tell you about this jacket. My favorite part I always say um about the jacket is the care label. Because it's promises, right? Promises about what you're buying, and they're real. And and that's the like show and tell moment. When people say, oh, it's impossible, it's hard. And look, I I understand that it's not at a big scale, but um it can be done. And I think this world just needs more examples of amazing things we can do if we put our minds to it, and and that if we put the resources that exist out there and allocate them to those things, we've actually got a lot to be optimistic about in the future.
SPEAKER_00But that's what excites me so much about NPOL. Can we call it NPOL? Yeah. Uh the fact that it's one thing for you to sit back and speculate and come up with philosophies about how it can be done, but you really are putting your money where your mouth is in terms of actually showing people how this can exist in terms of um a marketplace online where products are available that you've developed. Can you share a little bit about that journey?
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. Um, so we we were um working very closely on um multiple project streams with Ginkgo BioWorks, um, a Boston-based biotech company that um is building the platform to make biology easier to engineer, their their words, not mine. Um, and the idea, right, is that they provide the infrastructure. What apps are you going to build on that, right? If I can use that analogy. So working closely with the creative team, we were like, let's make the App Store, right? This is how we're thinking about it internally. Um so we're going to create a platform where we can start to show what these technologies can do. Um, and we're going to do that through beautifully designed, well-crafted products that tell stories, but that start to build the supply chains on the back end that we would like to see, right? So on the front end, you it's it's a shop and it's got a beautiful journal where we interview a lot of leading voices and actors in this field to build that culture, um, to build that understanding. Can I just say it's remarkable that you can go on the website and buy something and it arrives? That's huge in of itself for a biotech industry. Look, there might just be four jackets, but you can still own one. Yeah. Right? It's not a demo piece, it's it's you can you we've shown what that commercial journey can look like. One version of what it can look like. And then on the back end, it's it's relationships, it's supply chains, um, it's it's benchmarking. Um, you know, and we're we're working not only to make our own products, but to engage um people who are making their own and start to build an ecosystem around this because we're so early. So actually, the more examples we can show, even if it's three mycelium-based products or four or ten, it actually doesn't matter. It's it's demonstrating that there is a critical mass, it's happening, and it's exciting, and like that kind of momentum, being able to share it through this interface, right? It could have been a talk. I I always say this could have been an email.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's it's one of those projects. But actually, it's it's stronger, like you know, appearing like this, for us to start asking ourselves questions around how do we talk about GMO versus non-GMO? Um, gosh, we got very excited because there's a company in the US that makes um a glowing plant and they're selling it direct to consumer and to growers as a novelty, and people were so excited about it when it launched. How do you talk about that? We've got to get good at talking about that. We've got to get good at not educating the consumer, which is, I think, the instinct a lot of the times on the technical side. Oh, if only the consumer understood that GMO is okay, they just need education. It's like, no, they need engagement so that they can make up their own minds. And in a way, this space is trying to do that, is you know, we've got a glossary there, so that you can, if you're interested, work your way through what some of these terms mean. Um and and then you decide how you want to engage and and at what level you'd like to engage with that. So MPOL is very special when you go deep into the weeds of what it takes to have that level of proof of work in what is still such a nascent um field. And I and I just hope that it creates this shorthand that so many people I know need to be able to, if you like, lubricate their conversations with stakeholders a little bit better. I know, you know, because I've worked in policy environments that most of the times like the policy framework and the words and the like the benefits, that's the easy part. The hard part is having examples, but like having beautiful examples that compel people to go. So I don't know if um maybe you you you didn't see it because it's very it's a very niche thing to have seen, I guess, um Houses of Parliament. There was um uh a session um basically helping parliamentarians understand um what is industrial biotechnology. Um and it was very quaint but amazing to see one of the chairs lifting an example, not one of ours, but you know, other people who are building in this field and being able to say, I think it was the oh gosh, now I'm gonna forget the name. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It was a handbag. Um and one of the parliamentarians was just gushing at bacteria made this handbag, and I thought, that's a massive cultural moment, you know, massive cultural moment. For her to be able to have that in her hand and to make the case that way rather than in abstract forms means that policy people are starting to understand that, of course, we have a digital economy where materials are transient and well immaterial, right? It's very difficult to name the real economy. The real economy beyond sort of the the dematerialized world of a digital reality is that with industrial biotechnology, we're talking about growing and uh at scale uh materials that are going to need different actors across that value chain to turn them into the goods and services that you know um power the economy in many respects. Um and so from the lab through to uh garment manufacturer there are a lot of people in that value chain um who are going to have jobs uh and and and good jobs, I should say, uh out of that, um, but also who are contributing to our um uh efforts to divest from um a fossil fuel-based economy. So it's it's it is a very promising vision if you can show people and and be super clear about those tangible benefits. Um and and part of that, I think, part of the role that design is playing, certainly in this field, is articulating that vision um not from a speculative point of view, but through engaging real actors on the ground to to start to build these models and and hopefully for us to get good at that into the future.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that other industries are also waking up to the importance of harnessing nature in their practice?
SPEAKER_01I think that a lot of legislation is coming through the European Union, certainly, um, that is forcing companies, brands to to think seriously and act around the product use cycle of what they generate, but the carbon footprint and increasingly the toxicity, right, of these products. And it's good that legislation is doing that. Um, it's also good that nature has a lot of solutions, and I think now brands are taking that question more seriously because they don't have a choice in many ways. Um it's also interesting to see the insecurity that is at play with our global supply chains, whether it's COVID or the current conflict in the Middle East. Folks are starting to think more seriously about what more secure supply chains look like. And biotech in its emergence starts to tick a lot of boxes around, you know, carbon negative at times, material processes, um chemical processes that reduce or eliminate harm entirely. Things that are not easy to implement across your supply chain, absolutely, but people are more willing to start designing at that level because they're also seeing the volatility that exists for not doing those things. Um biology also is distributed, right? Uh I always say it's biology, it scales, it's distributed, uh, it evolves to fit its niches. The Amazon is a very good example of of that trio of facts. And and so the the real question I think is is how are we going to build the capabilities, the infrastructure to make this possible uh on a much larger scale. So I think people obsess a little bit with is it at scale, is it at scale, is it at scale? I I get that. But what also needs to scale is the infrastructure. And scale doesn't mean one big thing headquartered somewhere. In biology, it actually means lots of little things, right? Yeah. Um, and so I'm very interested in distributed modes of biomanufacturing because they start to unlock a possibility space that we haven't quite articulated yet, insofar as what does it mean to a bioregion to have certain um biomarkers uh characteristics that means that it's the best place to grow um mycelium leather-like material, but that because of you know the conditions there, its character is very different to, you know, the similar approach over the mountain. Um and and that's where, you know, questions of craft and identity are intrinsically interlinked with all of this. And maybe, you know, that systemic lens uh is is is what excites me the most about this. But but you c you c you cannot wait for the innovation to arrive to be able to build something that's integrated. You have to get all the stakeholders together from from the from the start, right?
SPEAKER_00If we were to look at an industry like furniture manufacturing, what would be one challenge you would throw to that to the people of that industry in terms of what you're seeing and what excites you and perhaps what you're not seeing in in an industry like that?
SPEAKER_01That's such an interesting question. Um I I would say that there are lots of different things everyone could be doing. Um and I and I th what I hear a lot is around material performance. Um because fundamentally folks are looking for a drop-in replacement. Uh they want to replace one thing with the next thing and that it should perform in exactly the same way so that they don't actually have to change anything. Right? This is the revolution that changes everything, and yet we change nothing. Um that's the status quo. And I push up against that because I just feel people are not being creative enough with their archives, with the stories that are embedded there that have the potential to evolve because of some of these processes. What is decay and should it be part of is it a design feature? How do you build a world around that? I I personally find that approach more interesting than business as usual, because business as usual is asking for the designer to be a material specifier, so not engaged at all with the origins and the life of a material. Right? If all you're doing is procurement, then you're you're not really in it. Um folks are looking for sheet materials. Okay, that forces all of these incredible biotech companies who are building amazing platforms with organisms that can do a plethora of different things to force them to make sheet materials instead. That's pretty boring, right? And then there's a certain uniformity and standard or expectations around standard output, repeatable output. Because of the economics of what the oil age gave us, right? I get that. And and and maybe this is where I say maybe the problem isn't what are we capable of doing? The problem is in the mental models we're using to do the doing. We talk a lot, and certainly in the circles I am in, about industrial biotechnology, about industrializing biology. And my question is: well, what if we biologized industry as the starting point? Because suddenly maybe you're not looking for a sheet material. It's a complete, these materials grow. Some of them grow into molds. They don't want to be bricks that are then assembled with glue after the fact. Goodness me, like talk about basic appreciation of like how to get the most out of a system, you know. And that's that's what I would want folks who are um, you know, and especially legacy brands, to really think about the rich, rich, rich history and archive that they have. That is such an advantage, so much intelligence to plug into this new material and and um biological intelligence. And and to allow biology to show, to teach us new ways of of making, new ways of of framing things, of thinking about things. Um that's what I would like to see more of. Is just don't wait to be a recipient of a finished material that meets a standard that is based on petroleum-based materials, right? Yeah. It's so silly. It's it's you know, it's ridiculous. Um rather, we should be saying, what is a chair now that we can grow XYZ? And and we don't have to have all of the answers, but we have to participate in the research, the development, the dreaming of these things. We can't just wait passively for something to land.
SPEAKER_00But when you're challenging the economic approach of leg the legacy approach there, the same culturally design-wise, um manufacturing-wise, I mean, it does create a level of being uncomfortable. And that's what I admire about you is that you're happy to sit in that space of being uncomfortable and not necessarily having the answers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, climate change is pretty uncomfortable. So I'm like, I'm really sorry, I don't know who needs to hear this, but you know, we we don't actually have a choice in terms of response. We're going to respond. It's just how long is it going to take? And given what we know today, how much are you setting yourself up to be able to meet that moment? I think that's where I kind of go, well, people will either be forced or they'll get on top of it sooner rather than later. And I and I feel like actually, yes, it's uncomfortable, but usually what's uncomfortable is sitting in this in the unknown space, sitting in action. If you're not doing anything, it's pretty uncomfortable. It's only when you start doing that that discomfort is transformed into some level of agency that starts to provide more certainty in in domains, and and that builds a certain level of momentum towards more than just stasis, right?
SPEAKER_00Just as we draw to a close, Natsa, I was curious, like, what is your your dream for Faber Futures for the next, let's say, five to ten years? Like what you're doing so many different things at the moment from facilitating these big conversations through to um yeah, inspiring innovation, hands-on, uh, again, finding the stories, but then sharing the stories and also finding subject matter experts that can talk cross industry and then also inspire thoughts to a third party. I love that. I mean, what yeah, what is your dream for you know the next five to ten year window, would you say?
SPEAKER_01So when I started the company, um, it was really responding to a real market shift in um in the industrial biotech space. Uh, there were lots of startups, lots of promises, um, a lot of energy and investment in a field that will change the world. Um, but so much of the work as in-betweeners, sitting across science, sitting across design culture meant that there was a lot of priming to do still about how you join the dots. And I feel like that's what we've spent the last uh eight years now doing is um building you know project spaces with different stakeholders and collaborators, and sometimes uh conducting our own RD through um funded projects to be able to really build the the what if we get this right space. Um and I think we have a body of knowledge that we really want to share with industry on on both ends. Um and so I feel that the next um five years of Fabi Futures is helping brands feel confident to make this leap. Because those startups, um many are still here. They survived the 22 slump. Um but most brands are still in that sort of we we don't know, so we won't do anything until someone else does, and then maybe we'll start to invest in starting to understand. Uh and I think Faber Futures is primed to be a conduit to enable the, I would say, rapid adoption of the knowledge to figure out where the biggest opportunities are to be able to make um you know that transition into a more biophilic way of uh production. And I don't get me wrong, I don't I don't believe that you know a furniture maker can suddenly, or a furniture brand can suddenly biobase everything. We're not there. We've got a long way to go. I think nylon took what 50, 40 years to scale, right? Um and you know, this is sort of this work is circa 2009, you know, it's we've got we've got a long way to go. But what can we do now? Where are the biggest opportunities now? Um so yes, I think that Faber Futures um will continue to work in this space um and hopefully start to demonstrate with in our convening power being able to enable brands to sit comfortably and authoratively in this in this space.
SPEAKER_00Well, you have a unique vantage point and voice and your story in and of itself is quite remarkable in that size. So I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to to share it so generously with us today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. It's been my pleasure.