Ep. 213: The Quiet Rebellion of Biodesigner Natsai Audrey Chieza

Natsai Audrey Chieza spent her youth in Zimbabwe in a close-knit extended family where she and her cousins were “in each others’ pockets.” In her teenage years the national economy crashed, necessitating a family relocation to the UK, and she began learning the skill of “not belonging.” Architecture studies proved alienating so she found a way to combine them with her love of fashion (to the consternation of her professors.) Rejecting the prescribed path of a professional architect, she instead pursued a postgraduate program in Material Futures that set her on a path of designing with bacteria. Now, she’s founded Faber Futures, a biodesign studio, and Normal Phenomena of Life, an artful lifestyle and fashion brand that also functions as a working prototype of a new model bioeconomy. She’s spent her whole life quietly not doing what was expected of her, and in this space of outsiderness she’s been very busy creating new paradigms for how we might collaborate with nature and new models for the equitable stewardship of these new biotechnologies. So, in terms of cultural infrastructure, she is an architect after all! 

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Read the Transcript

Natsi Audrey Chieza:  I feel we are at a time where as designers we have to build working prototypes to expand the imaginary about what is possible. 

Amy Devers: Today I’m talking to biodesigner Natsai Audrey Chieza. Natsai is an absolutely visionary designer and thought leader. She is the founder and CEO of Faber Futures a pioneering design agency that melds consumer biotechnology advancements with real-world applications. She’s also co-founder of Normal Phenomena of Life (NPOL), a consumer brand offering biotech products online. NPOL makes tangible how biotechnology can generate new materials that can be beautifully designed to support climate goals and the cultivation of resilient bioeconomy value chains. Natsai’s approach involves broad-ranging partnerships across biotech, consumer sectors, and cultural institutions. It uses collaborative, story-driven strategies to catalyze engagement and concrete action on critical issues. Notable clients and commissioning bodies include Ginkgo Bioworks, adidas, the Design Museum, MIT Media Lab, and the World Economic Forum (WEF). As a member of the WEF's Global Futures Council on Synthetic Biology, Natsai advocates for the integration of design and culture in policy development for bioeconomies powered by biotechnology. Her insights and leadership are sought after on various stages, including as a speaker at SxSW, TED, and Design Indaba. Natsai’s contributions to biophilic design have earned her significant media coverage and accolades, including the 2019 INDEX award, known as the Nobel Prize for design. As you’ll hear, Natsai’s life and work is truly fascinating, and through the telling of her own story, she generously gifts us with a very clear vision for a bright and harmonious future… here’s Natsai…

Natsai Audrey Chieza: Hi, my name is Natsai Audrey Chieza and I am based in Norway, in Oslo, but my company is London based. I am the Founder of Faber Futures and we are a design agency that is bridging design for the real world with the design of biology. This has really spurred on by an understanding that if we can design at the molecular scale, DNA for living entities that do things that are not ordinarily found in nature to solve some of our biggest challenges, and then we have to connect that, right, to the real world and how these technologies will interface with society and the environment at a much larger scale. So we exist to really bridge the design of biology with the design of systems. 

Amy: And it is fascinating! I’m so excited to hear not only about your creative process, but how you got to where you are and how your personal brand of, I don’t know… it seems to me like you might be very right-brained and left-brained at the same time and you’re synergizing and synthesizing a lot of information into your process. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s go back (laughter) to your youth. You were born and raised in Zimbabwe, yes?

Natsai: That’s correct, yes. 

Amy: I’d love to know what kinds of formative experiences shaped your young psyche and captured your imagination? 

Natsai: It’s such a fun question. I hardly ever get asked it and I don’t know that I have a wise (laughs) retelling of the story. But I grew up in a pretty conservative context, surrounded by a lot of family, extended family, strong family ties, within a very small radius. I think everyone was at least, well, not at least, but under 15 minutes away by car and so we were definitely in each other’s pockets. So I grew up with at least three or four different cousins, all of my age, and my sister would have been the same and so forth. So we sort of went through school together and it was a very tight-knit scenario. 

Amy: And what kinds of things would you get into?

Natsai: I mean all sorts (laughter), can you imagine? We’ve got these amazing photographs across the entire family of birthday parties and you can never tell whose birthday it is because there are like 20 kids and at least three or four of them are exactly the same age, but the birthday cake says ‘one’ or ‘three’ or ‘four.’ So that’s always fun. But we spent a lot of time together, locally, at school and we used to holiday a lot together. But then something really fundamental shifted when I was 17. My family and I moved to the United Kingdom at precisely the same time that the economy tanked in Zimbabwe. And so…People were leaving because their job prospects were shifting, job prospects are shifting because economic conditions are worsening. So my dad moved to Scotland, he’s a doctor, and at the time he was training to become an anesthetist and he got a post in the Scottish borders, spent a couple of years there. Moved down to London where historically we’d always had family because of the colonial ties with the United Kingdom. So his sister was there, my mom’s sister was there and we already had an established network. It was quite easy for him to slot right in. And to be fair to my dad (laughs), I hope he doesn’t listen to this, but he’d actually lived in the United Kingdom a while back when he was studying as a… what do you call it in America, before you become a postgrad? An undergrad. (Laughs)

Amy: Yes!

Natsai: That’s it! So he had history there and it was always a plan that he would come back. He didn’t, and so we followed. And I remember my mom pulling us out of school and she was like, ‘don’t worry, they’re going to keep your places because we’re coming back.’ And then within a couple of years, hyperinflation in Zimbabwe just sunk the entire economy and so we never went back, except for on holiday. And so what’s crazy about that time is that though we grew up and many people did in really close-knit, highly educated, upwardly mobile communities, at least that was my background. Our entire relation or structure got completely wiped out because everyone left the country to go to Canada, to go to Australia, to go to the United States, to go to the UK. There were Zimbabweans everywhere, the diaspora is so, so expansive, it’s insane. And so when I go back home now, I have family there, but none of my friends are there that I grew up with at school. It’s the complete opposite of how we grew up, with a very strong community, it’s completely fragmented and disjointed. And so it’s a strange old thing that you can in one generation go from one extreme, because it was an extreme (laughs) how close-knit we were, to the opposite which is just complete alienation, I think, is a good way of putting it. 

Amy: Wow! So in the extreme contrast of those situations, what’s the nutrition, where’s the lesson or what have you been able to mine from those experiences that serve you now? 

Natsai: I’m very acutely aware of my… Theresa May and the Brexit years, described people in the United Kingdom who weren’t nationalistic, as ‘citizens of nowhere.’ And that struck a chord with me because I think I’d carried with myself this sense that I didn’t really belong anywhere. I no longer belonged in Zimbabwe because, sure I grew up there, I left when I was 17, but I became an adult in a completely different context. I lived in the United Kingdom for about 20 years. So the sense, I think, of not belonging has always been pretty apparent to me and it’s something, I think, that I just channel because you just kind of need to make hay with that. And I find myself now living in Oslo, in Norway and I think part of that is trying to discover really what this edge is, the places you situate yourself to be able to learn different things about yourself. How far can you push that idea? So my husband and I moved to Norway during the pandemic years, in 2020, because we got a little bit tired of doing the pandemic in the suburbs in the United Kingdom, it’s pretty dry and this very sort of strong sense of attrition (laughs), with the political context there, it was just a change, it was a good idea. Like let’s go and lockdown somewhere else because then at least we’re learning something about ourselves. So I think the nutrition then might be tied to not being afraid to be a fish out of water because my history has shown me that you kind of just need to go with the flow there a little bit and at every step you’re going to learn something new about yourself.

Amy: what are you learning about yourself in Oslo now? What is being revealed to you? Other than not being afraid to be a fish out of water, are there aspects of the culture or,parenting as well, it seems like you’re quilting a really interesting patchwork together? What is it teaching you about yourself? 

Natsai: I love this quilt analogy, because not all quilts look pretty, but everyone keeps them because they mean something. And I think I’m in that process of trying to figure out what is this thing that we’re making together. So we moved in 2020, my husband and I. I think we caught one of the last flights out before everything totally locked down. 

Amy: Oh wow!

Natsai: we get on the flight, we’ve got two bicycles and bike bags and hand luggage and masks and visors (laughs) and gloves, but that was pretty much it. But then two weeks later I discovered I was pregnant. (Laughs) So that was hilarious, because it was just like…

Amy: Wow, you are going with the flow! (Laughter)

Natsai: We looked at our apartment and like we’d been in love with it for two weeks, and then (laughs) I was like oh my god, we can’t raise a child in here. (Laughs) This is completely inappropriate to have a small child in this loft apartment. 

Amy: Oh my gosh. 

Natsai: So suddenly all of these things just kicked in overdrive, where you start to have completely different priorities. And you’re having these new priorities and a new context, there’s nothing that is telling you that you’re doing the right thing or there’s no precedent, there’s no roadmap. We didn’t know anyone. Sure, everyone speaks English here, but then to not speak Norwegian is problematic because then you’re not really in the culture. And this is happening during a pandemic. So we had a pandemic baby and it was really strange, but then I was really busy at work and so I think that kept me focused and occupied with so much more that I didn’t get bogged down in the ridiculousness of the situation we found ourselves in. (Laughter)

Amy: It does sound a bit ridiculous, I’m not gonna lie, you moved there with two suitcases and find out you’re pregnant. You were really surfing the vicissitudes of life with finesse Natsai, it sounds like. 

Natsai: But you know, I don’t think it’s with finesse, (laughter)…

Amy: Just holding on for dear life? 

Natsai: I think there’s a little bit of that, it’s not been easy, and it certainly isn’t any easier, it’s just different, right? She’s two and a half now and so we’ve been here for two and a half plus nine months. (Laughter) Yeah, I think what it is teaching us to be here is that things can be really open-ended and you have to have some constants that keep you grounded, but it really matters to us that we have such close proximity to nature because in a way if in doubt, just go to the forest for a hike and I can’t emphasize how much of a tonic that is. Because of course with the work that we do, I’m constantly travelling and I’m constantly wired, so it’s a strange, beautiful, messy experiment and so far we’re still holding on. (Laughs)

Amy: I love that you just described it as a ‘strange, messy, beautiful experiment, because that maybe sounds like the theme song of your life, in terms of your work and your creative process as well. Does that describe it, do you think?

Natsai: Yeah. (Laughter) 

Amy: I do want to back up to the 17 year old you who got abruptly shifted away from your close-knit existence and I’m wondering if at the time, where were you leaning in terms of your creativity and your burgeoning adulthood. What was coming to the surface there and did the shift to a new domicile, a new home country. What did that do in terms of your life plan?

Natsai: I wish I had a fantastical story, but it was pretty boring. Like I said earlier, we were a pretty conservative family. My parents are both professionals, we were post-war babies, we were the so-called ‘born-frees,’ and so they lived at a time where black emancipation was so tied and configured to having an education and being able to transcend Apartheid effectively, either through your education, moving abroad probably to the United Kingdom or being able to work through the racial hierarchy in some shape and form in Zimbabwe. But for that again, education is key. So my mom was working for Lever Brothers, which is a Unilever company, she still works there. (Laughs) She’s that traditional kind of ‘job for life’ and my dad, for him as a professional, he was a doctor and he was going to work through the ranks, so to speak, that way. And if you’re a doctor you’re pretty much employable in so many different contexts. And that was actually his way into other geographical context. And so that emphasis on education and professionalization or being a professional of some capacity… my dad always used to say, “No one can take that away from you.” And it’s true! Led me quite early on to understand that though I loved art and I’m talking when I was eight, 12, and 16 years old, I love art. I thrived in those classes. I knew that I couldn’t become an artist, there was no roadmap for that. I had to study architecture because that is a professional qualification. So I knew, probably from the age of 11 that that’s probably what I was going to do. But by the time we came to the United Kingdom, I finished up my high school, which was a continuation of schooling in Zimbabwe because of colonialism, exact same system, exact same exams. There was no stress or period of transition into another world, except actually when I ended up at architecture school in Edinburgh. That’s when that sort of culture shock and destabilizing event happens, is when you actually end up going to university and I think that’s true for anyone, regardless of where you’re coming from. It’s a new time, right? 

Amy: Yeah, it’s a new time, it’s a taste of a kind of independence, it’s frequently a forced individuation and detachment from a lot of your security systems. But it’s also, I think, if you care to discuss, it’s worth noting that you are also a minority in the situation, in an architecture field that’s primarily still spewing Western canon at you and…

Natsai: Oh yeah, it was the most alienating education I’ve ever had. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Natsai: And I think I sort of clocked out by Year 2 or towards the end of my first year. I knew that this environment wasn’t set up to enable me to be my absolute best. I was just paying fees and my job was to not fail. (Laughs) It was totally transactional from that perspective. Whereas I think for so many people, and I saw that with some of my peers, they were being prepared to succeed, you know? It’s a completely different dynamic. 

Amy: Yes, and it sounds like you clicked into a sort of self-aware survival mode, knowing the transactional nature of it was about understanding you’re still served by getting the degree, even if it wasn’t something you were passionate about. And yet the contrast between your experience and those who are actually having their creative fires lit, it must have felt, I don’t know, a little bit heartbreaking and alienating. But at the same time sometimes those experiences propel you in a new direction. How did you process all that? 

Natsai: I said earlier that I grew up in quite a conservative environment. Not just in terms of my family, but just like the community, the society, very religious and all the rest, and traditional in terms of Tswana culture, not necessarily a bad thing, just it was about conservative values. But what was very true about me is that I quietly rebelled. I quietly knew that this wasn’t going to be all that there was for me. And so I didn’t choose the things you were supposed to choose. Even architecture was like quite a rebellion. (Laughs)

Amy: I can see that, totally. 

Natsai: Because it wasn’t law, right, it wasn’t medicine. Most of my dad’s side of the family, they’re doctors, they’re nurses, midwives, and I was like, no, I’m not doing that. So there was a quiet rebellion in me, I think from quite an early age. I listened to all the wrong music, I liked art and strangely in Zimbabwean culture if you like art, it’s a very masculine expression of self. And I was like, that’s stupid. (Laughter) So by the time I’m a first year student trying to find my way around the Western canon of classical architecture that no one is really clear about who originated any of this anyway, not having the language or the social context even to name it for what it was, which was just like one particular vision of what constitutes good design and then some. I guess I kind of said, well, if this is place isn’t going to uplift me, then I’m going to seek out other territories for that. And I sort of remember my thesis being about fashion and architecture and deconstructivism. 

Amy: Oh yeah, that is rebellion. 

Natsai: Oh my god, it was like the ultimate rebellion. And the thing is, I was like genuinely interested in fashion. I think I saw it as a community… for context, as most architecture students sadly probably are still, working through to the late hours of the morning trying to get work done. And in the morning you wake up and I would grab a coffee and I would go to the local corner shop and the one right next to my studio had some of the best fashion publications. And a lot of them, and rather than reaching out for the traditional architecture magazines, I would stock up on all the fashion ones, take them to my desk and just dream and learn about the ways in which you could create… you could express yourself as an individual through your work. Whereas everything about my education was about how to be like Le Corbusier (laughter) And it’s like, oh my god, or if you were me, kind of going, I guess I want to be like Zaha Hadid. (Laughs) It’s like wow, slim pickings hey, at the time. I’m glad to say that it’s not quite as bad as it used to be now, though still more work to be done there. But you know, it was quite a rebellion for me to just zone out that early and start to explore that and find new ways of incorporating it into my work. And so by the time I wrote my thesis, I knew it was valid because I’d been doing the work. But of course my thesis supervisor thought I was nuts and didn’t understand that there was even a parallel to be made between fashion and the architecture and deconstructivism. (Laughs) I was just like, oh my god, the bias here, it knows no bounds. 

Amy: Wow!

Natsai: So anyway, I just about managed to pass and then left. (laughs)

Amy: It sounds to me like you’re a systems thinker though too because you’re understanding that you have to work within this system and yet you need to also venture outside of it. So instead of just smashing the system, which in some ways doesn’t serve you because you don’t get the degree, you figure out how to cross-pollinate and then build the system, reverse engineer back into checking the boxes that qualify for the system. And I see so much of that in what you’re doing now.So much of it is imagining those networks and spaces that don’t exist yet and being an architect of those. 

Natsai: Exactly and it took me a really long time to (laughs) own up to the fact that I studied architecture. (Laughter) Well, literally to say it out loud because I think for about seven years after the fact I didn’t know how to talk about architecture after I left and after I left under such dissatisfactory kind of circumstances. 

Amy: You hadn’t composted it yet. 

Natsai: No, I really hadn’t,, it took me a really long time to understand what had just happened, what I had learnt, why it was relevant and how I was practicing it. And that was a crucial point, is how have I incorporated this practice into the worlds that I’m trying to build now? Even the notion of world building was like ooh, that’s so interesting, who is doing that kind of work? It’s like actually you are, just in different ways. Yeah, seven years after the fact I started to sort of reflect on that and in many ways and in how I envisage what we’re doing, we are architecting new paradigms for collaboration, for systems and that practice isn’t just about finding a client who pays you money to do a project. (Laughs) It’s, oh, no one knows this work should exist, how do we start the work now, to get a point in five years’ time where folks will understand that this work needs to exist, and in the meantime, what kinds of networks have we been creating to be able to innovate fast, when the time comes. And just really focusing on the ugly work, the work that is so unseen, that needs to exist to create the conditions for other work to exist. The new funding models even for some of the projects that we pursue, that are outside of the usual, here’s a pitch. (Laughs) And thinking about how you create new forms of interactions and build networks in a different way, to actually cultivate the ground for future happenings. And we’re very comfortable that those future happenings might not be us doing it, but that we have paved a way through for somebody else to be able to… and with the resources and, intellect or network or whatever else they have, to actually capitalize on a critical mass of understanding around the reason why something like that should exist. 

Amy: I’m seeing such a parallel in my mind between the cultivating you’re doing of creating the conditions so that this work can exist. you also have to create the conditions in your work for biology, for you to synergize with biology in order to yield the results that you’re designing for. I know you studied material futures with a focus on synthetic biology and yeah, can you set us up for the founding of Faber Futures and why it is that you’re so dedicated to biodesign and what you’re doing with it? 

Natsai: Sure. So I finish architecture school, two weeks later I apply for a course at Central Saint Martins called Textile Futures at the time. I get in, which is a win. (Laughs) And just after that summer I start the course and it’s an amazing program that… this is circa 2009, a program that focuses on technology culture and textiles. And so I have no textile background, but materials, I get it, because I’ve been dreaming materials through some of the conceptual work on my architecture program. And actually that’s where maybe I did thrive, was this interest in materiality. And what I learn on this course is that there are so many incredible implications for the types of technologies that are going to dominate the future. And so there’s a big focus on digital at the time and then a narrow niche kind of area around synthetic biology. And I chose the narrow niche area. (Laughs)

Amy: Yeah, because you’re a quiet rebel. (Laughs)

Natsai: Yes. And unlike my studies in architecture, I was surrounded by incredible women who were our course directors, our tutors, our lecturers, like all women, it was really problematic. Eventually they changed the name of the course to ‘material futures,’ hoping it would attract more dudes and it didn’t. (Laughter) So it’s very gendered work it turns out. But I was like start-struck, besotted even with seeing women just in their power directing us into futures no one else had been able to and uncover for me in any shape or form. 

Amy: It is intoxicating, isn’t it, when you…

Natsai: It was powerful. It was a really powerful experience for me. I mean all of my colleagues of course on the course were women, (laughs) so it was a very strange situation to come out from, very male dominated situation to this. But I think it was exactly what I needed at the time. We all, I think, carefully watched what other interests our tutors had around us and our course director at the time, Carole Collet, she was developing her research into biological systems for textiles and she was a maverick in her own right at Central Saint Martins. She brought digital to textiles and fashion by building a shed in a room, because no one else would give her the space to create the infrastructure for students to interact and experiment with digital technologies. She literally brought, I think a shed from B&Q (laughter), built it in the studio and filled it with a lot of stuff and wires and things. (Laughs) And that was the wellspring, right, for all of this incredible creative work coming out of her program. And then she was segueing and she constantly is doing this still to this day, into synthetic biology, biotechnology and articulating through her own practice what that possibility space. And I was like yes, I want to work with her. And I did eventually, when I graduated I became her research assistant while pursuing my own interests in the field. And so when I was working on my thesis, I reached out to a bunch of synthetic biologists in London and one responded, Professor John Ward, and he was based at University of College London at the Department of Biochemical Engineering. And he was like, yeah, sure you can come and see what we do with synthetic biology. (Laughs) And I was thrilled. But then he was like, here’s a petri dish, lick it and see what happens and come back in a few days. So that was like his gentle segue for me into like, ‘welcome to the world of microbiology.’ (Laughs)

Amy: Did you lick it? 

Natsai: Oh yeah! I licked it and you do fingerprints on nutrient agar and you come back and you come back to your microbiome on a petri dish and it’s just like the most mind-blowing sensational thing, right, to experience, if you aren’t studying biology?  

Amy: Wow! Right (laughs)

Natsai: Whereas everyone was kind of eye-rolling me going, oh my god, you’ve got E.coli, because we all do, and it smells, so could you, when you’re done with that, just like throw those petri dishes away. (Laughs) 

Amy: That’s a new kind of vulnerability, having your microbiome be subject to judgement. (Laughs)

Natsai: Yeah and it’s this amazing… this world that you don’t know, unless you know. And I was hooked. So I kept coming back and I became a honorary designer in residence, this was my first foray into how to do great work with no institutional support except the kindness of one individual (laughs), and figuring out what to do with that.

Amy: Yeah, exactly, sometimes when you’re doing such pioneering work, sometimes that’s all you have to work with and that proactivity that you’re taking it upon yourself, and you’re discovering and making connections, that also feels like part of the education. 

Natsai: Exactly. Okay, so if we do our cast our eyes back to 2011, which is when I graduated, the word ‘biodesign’ wasn’t even in circulation. I was featured in a book that coined the term, with my thesis project, which is very embarrassing, please don’t look at it. (Laughs)

Amy: But we have to, what’s the name of the book?

Natsai: I think it’s called Biodesign now. (Laughs)

Amy: Okay.

Natsai: And so you know, there was no precedent for how you even work in this way, except I should caveat that and say I looked to what bio-artists had been doing. And they had been going and forging these relationships with scientists and I thought okay, that’s a way. And so it was very important for me to nurture that relationship with John. He allowed me to share his bench because he was too busy, a lot of the times, I think, to do the fun work, and he saw me maybe as someone doing fun, weird work. So at the time he was like okay, what you need to learn about microbiology is there are microbes everywhere, so there are microbes on you and then I said, “That means there are microbes in plants and in root systems,” and so we did a project that taught me how to bio-prospect for different organisms in different contexts, including herbs. And so I have an early project called The Rhizosphere Pigment Lab, which is really inspired by Dai Fujiwara’s project, Color Hunting. Of course from Issey Miyake, and he went and looked for color in the jungle, and built an incredible color palette representative of that environment. It turns out Emilio Pucci’s colors also derived from looking to nature and trying to color match with chemistry at the time. Those exact pigments, which is what you get as the Pucci colors. So what I was learning from this process is that nature has this abundance of color and that you can look at it from a microbiome perspective and so I learnt how to isolate pigment producing microbes from the root plants, of different plants… from the root systems I should say of different plants. And that was amazing to me, to just say, I’m looking for color and there’s plenty of it, and these are the microbes that are responsible for generating it and this is what their context is in nature. And then John was like, ‘but here’s one I made for you earlier.’ He had streptomyces, coelicolor that he had isolated from his cacti plant on his windowsill in his office. And so he had  it in the freezer and he gave me the protocol to learn how to grow it. So then I was only working with this isolated organism. And it generated this beautiful sky blue color, hence coelicolor which in Latin means sky blue. And I just figured I wanted to translate this into a design context and that textiles was going to be a good place to start. And after a years’ worth of experimentation I, with John, discovered a protocol to dye textiles with it and I think the only reason why I stayed the course with that line of inquiry, was because it was a water efficient dye process and it didn’t have any toxins. And in textile design and manufacturing, downstream that’s a holy grail scenario. 

Amy: Yes, yes.

Natsai: So to have both of those things happening at the same time is just, you know, a lot of companies will innovate to try to solve for the one and not the other and yet here was biology just evolved over billions of years, just doing it and that the step to enable that process to happen didn’t come easy. We’d spent hours, weeks, months trying to grow this organism in liquid culture and isolate the pigment so that we could drop it in as a drop-in replacement, right, drop it in as a new ingredient to existing structures and systems of dyeing, from a screen printing to water bath…

Amy: Modelling lightening essentially. 

Natsai: It just wasn’t working… just the chemistry didn’t align with what the end product needed to be. And then one day I grew the microbes on the textile, like directly on the textile and that was a turning point. 

Amy: So that is amazing, and I’m also, I’m super excited about the moment where you decided to just try growing the bacteria directly on the textile. And I’m also cognizant of the fact that if you can’t develop something that matches what we already have in terms of plugging and playing into our existing systems, you now have this incredible discovery/invention/design on your hands, but it has no way to scale or propagate out in the world unless you design that system for it. 

Natsai: Exactly. 

Amy: But still, how exciting was it? When you decided to grow directly on the textiles, that’s a real moment of innovation and it worked Tell me about it? 

Natsai: It works beautifully. It’s so poetic because it’s not just about the end goal, and I think this is really when I understood the power of this work. I didn’t want to be the CEO of a dye company (laughter)…

Amy: You didn’t?

Natsai: Yeah, I still get strange looks that I’m not, because I think people still only understand the value of this work being able to scale the technology so that you can replace previous technologies and become an instant billionaire, because that’s how big the market is, right, for these products. That didn’t interest me because what I experienced was transcending from that logic of capitalism to being changed by the organism itself. Having its lifecycle drive all of my design decisions. So the lifecycle of fermentation with streptomyces is about seven days, so your entire schedule is on this seven day cycle and there are incredibly important moments in that seven day cycle where you have to intervene in the fermentation process for you to get what you require. 

Amy: Okay?

Natsai: And that’s really based on the protocols that we use that are contingent on dyeing the textile with microbes growing on it directly. It shifts your perception into this human/non-human relationship. It becomes apparent that there is a human/non-human relationship or human, more than human relationship, that somehow your fates are intertwined. And that the language that you use to describe the things that you’re doing, it is new language because you have no precedent for how you have to work with these organisms for this particular use case. You become it and vice versa. Maurizio Montalti talks about this a lot, he’s a founder of a company called MOGU, they make mycelium building materials. But he’s also an artist, right, and he talks about this… his words, he talks about ‘encountering the other.’ And it’s such a powerful word because that encountering completely shifts your perception around how scale can be achieved because suddenly you understand responsibility as being quite key to what that looks like. Responsibility to the living world at large, but also responsibility to communities who bring with them craft, which is the only way that this technique is going to become irresistible. So you join these different things up pretty quickly to realize that what we’re scaling here isn’t just an ingredient. We’re scaling a movement…

Amy: Hot damn! Hot damn! This is so exciting! (Laughter)

Natsai: And that the work and its value cannot be simmered down, my goodness me, to just a fucking ingredient. (Laughs) 

Amy: Right! Right!

Natsai: It’s so frustrating and so to your earlier question, ‘why Faber Futures?’ It’s because I’ve realized that we need to build a cultural infrastructure for these technologies, so much of the focus and effort and investment and sweat is right now oriented towards the technology. And I have faith that a lot of these technologies are going to do pretty incredible and powerful things, but we have wonderful precedence to learn from about the power of responsibility to be, now I steal Drew Envy’s words, to be ‘good parents to this technology.’ 

Amy: I’m so glad you said that because as you were talking about responsibility to communities, to the natural world and responsibility to this organism and the organism system, it felt like parenting to me. It felt like these children are born they’re so helpless and rely on you so much, but they also have a lot that they bring, that you’re not sure where it came from (laughs) and you just have to nurture it into existence. 

Natsai: And you can’t control…

Amy: Yeah. 

Natsai: You cannot control nature; you cannot control the market. There is so much that is out of our control right now, you cannot control AI, you can’t control… sorry to break it to you guys, you can’t control AI and synthetic biology and the Venn Diagram that is currently at play. 

Amy: Oh shit!

Natsai: Right? So the cultural infrastructure for technology has never been such an important kind of impact space to be working in and that’s why I founded the company because I knew that design could help us bridge some of these disconnected areas of innovation and that if we could invest just as much as we do in the infrastructure for biotechnology, the talent (laughs) for the sorts of engineers who end up working at these companies. If we could match that on the design side. If we could match that in the arts, then hopefully we have a public sphere that is cognizant, aware, educated, about what this all means so that they become responsible citizens of these technologies. So that they can demand from their legislatures, ways of incorporating climate tech, for example, a new infrastructure that accounts for community, that accounts for you know, legacies that have previously excluded people. Because when we talk about a ‘just transition,’ we’re not just talking about here are some cool technology and now a few people are going to become extremely wealthy creating it. 

Amy: I love how you flip into ‘bro’ voice when you say that. (Laughter)

Natsai: Well, I challenge anyone (laughs) to show me otherwise. 

Amy: Right, right, I’m with you…

Natsai: It’s such an astute observation because I come back to this notion of like the gendered work that is at play because in the same way that my time at CSM on textile futures was incredibly gendered. I also think that there’s a reason why I seem to only be able to attract women to work for me. (Laughs) There are very few men who are agitating in this way, in this field and they’re not necessarily pioneering the ideas when they do. And I find that very troubling, very troubling indeed. . I am just struck that we are living in a very tense time where as a woman, as a mother to a daughter, I really sort of wonder about our dominant culture and our political context right now, that seems to not value the notion of taking care of.

Amy: Yeah, I know. 

Natsai: And we have to take care of the planet, we have to take care of each other, we have to take care of ourselves. 

Amy: Yes!

Natsai: We don’t even know how to do that anymore, it seems, that’s how pervasive this culture is. And so how do we parent these technologies, and not just synthetic biology, but AI too, right? (Laughs)

Amy: Yeah.

Natsai: Quantum, I think about that a lot and I think about what we’re up against in trying to do so, because it’s not easy to find allies to that effect.

Amy: I keep thinking back to this parallel to nature and how would nature do it? Nature would probably evolve over several generations, right? So it feels to me if we’re going to swing the pendulum a little bit away from extractive to more generative, it’s probably going to happen over generations. 

Natsai: Exactly, which is whyI think about our talents, our gifts, the now, if I think about condition setting, I feel we are at a time where as designers we have to build working prototypes to expand the imaginary about what is possible. And that this is the time to build those pilots and say, ‘this is what we mean when we say equitable via technology.’ Because right now, that’s just a thesis in someone’s academic paper. But there are no incentives for the market to work towards that now, to build that out fast now. So that the role for the designer, I think, and certainly for us as Faber Futures is to say what is equitable biotechnology? What does that look like? What does that mean? And try to find context where we can actually start to prototype these ideas with real communities and then I come back to my architectural practice and I’m like, aha, that’s what I’m doing. (Laughs) Because so much of architecture is about those case study house type interventions that show a future rather than speculate on its feasibility. So one of the projects that we are engrossed in right now in the studio is normal phenomena of life. I think it’s our case study house (laughs) in the sense that…

Amy: That makes so much sense now, yes.

Natsai: Yeah, we have been obviously working in this arena now for… since I started the company in 2018 and we really understand what’s happening on the material innovation side of biotech, right? Where companies are using all forms of biotechnology to create new materials, next gen materials that are more sustainable. That allow us, enable us to divest from fossil fuels, in some cases they rely on organisms that actually eat methane to create new materials, like really fantastic, incredible innovations. And then that’s the lab based; this is what’s possible. When it’s met out into the real world, it has to actually interact with complicated things like supply chains and infrastructure and political dimensions around where people are prioritizing investment. And so the notion of where this innovation happens becomes really tangible, really quickly, when you start to think of how do you get it out there in the wild. And so we had been working with Ginkgo Bioworks, which is a biotechnology company based in Boston, that is building the infrastructure to make biology easier, infrastructure and technology, to make biology easier to engineer, effectively they are a platform and the idea is you have lots of different companies that go to them, to figure out how to find the right strain of an organism for very specific use case, for example. And they’re across health, they are in consumer products, you name it, everything happens here, potentially, that’s the thesis. And then I’m like, okay, great, it looks like everything happens here. Does design happen here? (Laughs) So we’ve been working with them now, on various different projects that led us to this moment where there was enough trust for us to build out a brand called Normal Phenomena of Life that exists effectively to bring products to market that are made with these new innovations, in a way that has completely different incentives, to how an existing brand might try to bring these new materials into their supply chain. And so with NPoL, we are trying to model across the value chain, how you create sustainable products that are meaningful. (Laughs) Which is so… it sounds so innocuous, but actually meaning is subjective and meaning can mean community based or…

Amy: It does not sound innocuous to me, this is the quiet rebels fiercely moving through the world by designing, demonstrating and presenting an alternative model that works and the scale proposition is that if it works for you, it can work several times over. It doesn’t necessarily need to mean that one enterprise…

Natsai: Monopolizes. 

Amy: Monopolizes, right, no, it propagates rather than monopolizes, that’s exciting. 

Natsai: Exactly. 

Amy: Because that’s community and that means equity is more insured because people have more ownership, it’s more decentralized and dissipated, distributed. 

Natsai: Exactly. I’m so thrilled that you have alighted at this, because that’s like the endgame, is how do we create a distributed biotech and we’ve basically created a shop to model that question. We’ve created a beautiful brand to communicate the value that is being created by merging design and biotech and the potential promise that needs all forms of accountability for it to be arrived at. So on the front end, when you visit the website, it looks like a shopping experience. You can buy a jacket that is made with microbial dyes. You can buy a beautiful tryptic limited-edition print made with algae pigments. And we have some really exciting new products that are coming online later on this year. But on the back end, (laughs) it took us a hot minute to figure this out, (laughs) but we built new supply chains and they’re values driven supply chains, where we are thinking about who do we work with to make sure that there’s no slave labor in what we’re doing. (Laughs) Number one. And then it’s like, oh, it turns out it’s not that difficult to choose that, right, which is not what we hear about dominant systems. We kind of hear that well, that’s just the world we live in. And what we’re learning on the back end is there are choices to be made about how we build up a bioeconomy. I mean one of the choices that I had to make a few weeks ago was we’re opening a US shop and we were wondering if the inventory that exists in the UK shop needs to be shipped to the US so that it’s available in the US. And that just sounded bananas from a carbon footprint perspective and so we have decided that the US shop will only stock stuff that is made in the US. (Laughs) And that is fascinating when you take that decision because your supply chain is hyper-local and because of regulatory realities, some of the stuff you’re going to be able to get in the US shop, it’s not the same stuff you can get in Europe. So again, from a backend perspective, this prototype that we built is super-super important for anyone in government right now who is scratching their head wondering what’s biotechnology and what does it have to do with the bioeconomy because we can show them under the hood what is actually at play, but through these beautifully designed products. Not through a freaking white paper, right? 

Amy: Right. Right. (Laughs)

Natsai: And no shade on white papers, it’s a different context. 

Amy: Even on a white paper, it can feel concrete, but still abstract. 

Natsai: Yes!

Amy: It needs to be sort of born out into a relatable human experience for it to resonate and that means appealing to what appeals to humans, beauty, function, utility, all of those things, even commerce and price point, all of that matters to make something less abstract and more probable. 

Natsai: Exactly! And again I come back to this ‘why does normal phenomena exist,’ (laughs) really to try and figure out what other incentives are there that we can program, new enterprises to inhabit (laughs) so that we don’t keep replicating the same outcomes. And so it’s really useful and important for me to be able to tell somebody why the jacket costs £4,000 because I can just tell them that one of the biggest barriers to scaling the bioeconomy as enabled by biotechnology is just how expensive fermentation is. And that if someone can just solve for that, this jacket will cost less it can’t be the case that… the only way you can bring down the cost of that fermentation is for the person who wants to ferment microbial pigments for textiles, to become a start-up, to vertically integrate the entire stack. That is an unrealistic proposition. (Laughs) We need to start thinking about the bioeconomy as something not too dissimilar to how we used to communally go and make our olive oil, right? Or bake our bread. We can’t all have the technology to do these things. We can’t all be experts in doing these things. I mean certainly we’re not. I am not a biologist. But I’m talking about the kind of infrastructure that allow any designer or crafts person to play with these new materials because we’ve lowered the barrier of entry to actually accessing the power of nature, to make these things. Whereas we’re on a path right now, I think, as you astutely observed, where we are looking to monopolies to create these technologies and for other existing monopolies, like fashion brands, to scale them. And I just think that is putting all our eggs in one basket. It’s not a case of either/or, we need both approaches. And so we are really trying to focus on what are those small scale interventions that show us a different way of… a different possibility and in some cases we are also working at a very high scale because it’s possible that particular technological input. And then we’re learning at Faber Futures what it means to actually bring biotech enabled products to market. 

Amy: That is so incredible and when I think about the nature of the work you’re doing, it’s incredibly holistic because you’re starting quite literally at the microbe level, but then needing to design all the way out to the macro globally, which might mean not a monopoly, but actually an ecosystem that can propagate itself globally, like mycelium or something, that can end up carpeting the globe in a way that can distribute things with a different kind of set of values. And to me that is the most concrete, exciting vision of the future that I’ve witnessed, that I’ve heard of, that I’ve been able to wrap my head around in a long time. And for that I’m super excited and super grateful to you and the work that you’re doing. 

Natsai: Thank you. I will just say, it is such a seductive vision. The idea that we can use nature and its tools and its abundance to help us navigate this transition that is underway and that we can do it in a way that is holistic, that accounts for community, that accounts for all the things we haven’t been able to get right. But this is not the status quo. I sat in a World Economic Forum talk a few months ago on trade and it was sobering. Because I realized that where I thought it’s a no-brainer that you want different kinds of people to be able to… and different geographies of innovation, since we’re building this from scratch, to emerge, that that is counter to trade and how it works on this planet and how it’s deeply political. And therefore this vision isn’t just going to happen. It has to be fought for…

Amy: It’s trying to grow in a hostile environment. 

Natsai: In some ways it is hostile, but in other ways it’s like… we’re going to make incredible changes because we have no choice. And I think more than likely we’re going to see a lot of strange and wonderful things happening because people didn’t have a choice. And you see this in places like Zimbabwe where everyone is pretty much off-grid, using solar panels, having access to their own water. But only because it’s a failed state. (Laughs) And there’s no government intervention for infrastructure. So it’s a really green place to live in many respects. (Laughs) It’s not green politics that has led the nation to behave in this way, it’s the economy is stupid. (Laughs)

Amy: And then ultimately necessity, which is nature…

Natsai: Exactly. 

Amy: Will figure out a way, I mean that’s what happens. (Laughs) Just by way of concluding this fantastic talk, I’m wondering how can folks who are maybe not engaged in biodesign or even biotechnology, what is needed? How can we support or add a little energy to this mission in some way? I like to spread the word through this show and other ways and I know that you’ve done a series called Ferment.TV and you’ve also done a few TED Talks and I want to direct everybody to those. So storytelling is a big part of this. What else can we do? How can we add support to this? 

Natsai: I think that one of the critical things that has to happen now is an awareness around the idea that biotechnology can be built from the ground up. And so if you are somebody who works in supply chains, you should be thinking long and hard about how you make those equitable, if they are contingent on microbes, for example. And then when I think about the design community, I get asked this question a lot, usually from graphic designers… I don’t know what it says about graphic design, but everyone is scratching their heads going, what is my purpose? (Laughs) Certainly it comes up. Communication. I am so excited when I see agencies shifting their priorities to make this revolution seductive. Design is so powerful, so powerful in changing mindsets and in shifting culture. And I would love to see resources being directed to that kind of enterprise and so one thought that comes to mind, Indy Johar talks about the scale of the interventions that need to happen for us not just meet our climate goals, but journey through this transition. And they are so immense. They’re so all-encompassing and crossing so many different domains. And I just think that everyone has a role to play in that and so asking yourself, in my work today how am I prioritizing nature? How am I prioritizing nature? How am I prioritizing nature? And it could be that your technology and your engineering nature (laughs)… and I think it’s a really good question to ask yourself how am I prioritizing nature? Because even for somebody who is engineering nature in a lab, there are design decisions being made about that DNA code. And that has been one of the things that has motivated me, scratching my head going, how can you design living systems if you don’t understand what’s happening in the real world? (Laughs) You’ve got to bring those things closer together. So from any discipline, I think it doesn’t really matter what the tool is, it might be synthetic biology, it might be graphic design, it might be product and industrial design. The question should just be, how am I prioritizing the living world? 

Amy: I’m going to take it. I’m going to proselytize on your behalf. Everyone that I come into contact with, I happen to teach at an art school, so I have a good audience. (Laughs)

Natsai: Amazing!

Amy: I am so excited about the work that you’re doing Natsai and I’m so grateful for you sharing… sharing it in your words because you have such a lyrical way of speaking about it, that is so… it brings us in and helps us understand and it moves me. So thank you so much. 

Natsai: Thank you so much Amy for having me and I have to say that this is one of the best conversations I’ve ever had about this work and it’s really special and generous for you to be able to take me on this journey. (Laughs)

Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening for a transcript of this episode, and more about Natsai including links, and images of her work - head to our website - cleverpodcast.com. While you’re there, check out our Resources page for books, info, and special offers from our guests, partners, and sponsors. And sign-up for our monthly substack. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: - share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, support our sponsors, and hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter X - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround podcast network. Visit surroundpodcasts.com to discover more of the Architecture and Design industry’s premier shows.

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Project Coelicolor: Transversal, 2019; Faber Futures in collaboration with Professor John Ward, Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London. Image Credit: Oskar Proctor.

This is Living Campaign for the launch of biodesign lifestyle brand and platform Normal Phenomena of Life, featuring the NPOL Original Exploring Jacket - made with microbial dyed silk. Image Credit: Toby Coulson

1:100 Scale Mycelium-based Site Model, Museum of Symbiosis. Designed by Faber Futures. The Laboratory of the Future at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Lesley Lokko, 2023. Image Credit: Ste Murray.

Mutupo, Faber Futures, commissioned by Studio Other Spaces, at Future Assembly at Biennale Architettura 2021: How Will We Live Together? Image Credit: Andrea Avezzù

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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