What is the Future Made Of?

A speculative workshop about bio-inspired design

Think of nature as a great designer. Through billions of years of evolution – of design trial and error (or re-route) – it has come up with uniquely functional and beautiful materials.

Nature’s ‘design’ is truly sustainable. It uses simple materials in clever ways, making natural materials sophisticated in structure and function. More than that, natural materials are part of a cycle of growth, decay, and change – no material is wasted.

Meanwhile, many human designs are wasteful and have created immense problems on a planetary scale. One of the biggest challenges for a sustainable future will be to find alternatives for the energy-consuming, non-degradable materials we use today.

What if we used nature’s ‘design’ as inspiration for smarter and more sustainable materials in our everyday lives? What could such a bio-inspired world look like? CollActive Materials, together with the speculative designer Emilia Tikka, invites you to a hands-on speculation workshop. Find out how researchers from Matters of Activity and Science of Intelligence use bio-design in their work – and make up your very own version of a bio-inspired future.

CollActive Materials  is led by Léa Perraudin and Martin Mueller and a joint project of the Clusters of Excellence „Matters of Activity. Image Space Material” and „Science of Intelligence”. The project is funded under the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder by the Berlin University Alliance.