Bacterial colouring: Using multi-disciplinary methods for eco-friendly textile design

Abstract

Bacterial colouring is a study on, how bacterial pigments can be used in a textile design context as a more climate and environmentally friendly alternative to the synthetic dyes used in the industry. The project is positioned within the field of natural science and design research using methods from the two disciplines, hence carrying out multi-disciplinary research. It is a part of the design research field ‘growing design’ where designers often collaborate with natural scientist to carry out biofabrication, thus providing new knowledge to the biodesign field. The natural science methods used are from biotechnology and are used to isolate, identify bacteria and produce bacterial pigments. The design methods are comprised of several prototyping studies from material research to application as a textile design proposal. For the design prototyping we applied projections divided into three steps: scenario 1, 2 and 3, where it was envisioned, how the colour range could broaden, if all colours were replaced with bacterial pigments.