Science Meets Design

What happens when the latest materials, insights and technology from the frontiers of science are placed in the hands of designers keen to experiment with new materials? Last year, ten design studios in the Skåne region of southern Sweden found out when they were paired with ten scientists at the cutting edge of materials research. What Matter_s was a collaboration between Southern Sweden Creatives, Form/Design Center, SPOK, and Art and Science Initiative. Curated by Nina Warnolf, the project had the studios spending six months exploring a new material, and then showing what it could do. The project proposed that the design industry of tomorrow cannot rely on the materials of yesterday; there is a global need to find new ways of making, to develop new sustainable materials and to find new applications for materials that are naturally abundant but have been neglected. One of the ten designers was Kunsik Choi, who paired with Prof. Rajni Hatti-Kaul from the biotechnology department at Lund University. The result of their collaboration was MATching – an exploration of the aesthetic poetry of bioplastics through a series of colourful handmade plant pots. The pots reference the tension between the natural, organic matter of the plant and the artificial, environmentally damaging properties of the material that conventionally holds it. Made by pouring pigmented liquid bioplastic into wooden moulds, the resultant vessels each have their own unique colour, shape and surface.