The column was mounted inside a rotating bioreactor prior to spraying. (Credit: Albert Palen)
Bastian Beyer worked with fellow designer Daniel Suarez to apply traditional knitting techniques to unusual fabrics before solidifying them using biological processes, to determine the structural potential of composite materials, says Natashah Hitti in her article on Dezeen.com.
The designers hope that the resulting material could have a use in architectural design and construction, as spatial dividers, shading features, reinforcement and potentially structural roof or wall systems. The experiment saw a handcrafted, soft textile column gradually transformed into a rigid structure by using an active textile microbiome (a collection of micro-organisms) of a bacteria called sporosarcina pasteurii to form a calcite layer on the fibre of the knitted structure.
Bastian Beyer uses bacteria to calcify knitting into construction materials.
