Biobased materials for the future

As a special event, Materia will be presenting a unique lecture on biobased materials for the future. At the Materials’ Library at the Design Museum in Holon (Israel), Els Zijlstra, Materia Creative Director, will show why innovative materials design is vital to securing our built future.

We all know that mineral resources and fossil fuels are disappearing. But are the proposed solutions going to have an effect? Is C2C-scale recycling really going to work logistically? How are we going to use engineered, biobased materials? How can we reduce harmful emissions and restore the CO2 balance, or replace current plastics with quality biopolymers, or encourage the growth of renewable energy sources, food and material sources? And all this for a world population that is growing by 250,000 people every day.

All the material trends for the future are derived from these topics. There are biobased materials, using waste as new raw materials, such as leather and mushrooms as well as concrete based on tomatoes. But also lightweight and translucent materials, smart materials with intelligent features, biomimicry as a guide and lots of techno-transfer as inspiration.

Using many inspiring examples, Els tracks and illustrates current trends and developments for the future. From engineered wood to ‘new garbage’, this story is all part of Materia’s mission to create a more beautiful, sustainable and high-quality built environment.

Some of the materials on display at the Design Museum are gorgeous inlaid stones in acrylic, sliced resin cast rings of bark or antler, flexible patterned wood, panels made of raised and bevelled wood and ‘Kingskin’, a textile made from the bark of the Mutuba tree, all of which are part of Materia’s collection and pictured here.

Photos of the museum through Ron Arad and the Design Museum Holon. Find out more on the Design Materials’ Library at Design Museum Holon here.