WHO ARE WE?
The BioBabes collective is an international team of feminist biodesigners, makers, and biohackers engaged in the design of better futures. A multicultural, multidisciplinary group that started at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in 2015 exploring the possibilities within the realms of biodesign.
We are experienced designers working with a range of material and fabrication processes, which include living organisms and organic matter. We work to disseminate biodesign to a wider audience with innovations related to the emerging field of biofabrication.
The collective is currently set up as a creative bio-centered research, design, and biofabrication consultancy studio with a cross-disciplinary approach. We welcome collaborations with designers, scientists, makers, and local industries, to enrich our research through design processes in order to secure industry-standard biobased materials and products for the consumer market.
Thora H Arnardottir is an architectural/bio designer and researcher, born and raised in Iceland, a country that has such a strong connection with the natural forces. Her aim is to engage in a more symbiotic relationship with nature, by understanding patterns and processes of our environment and exploring this in an adaptive systematic approach of her designs. Thora explores these processes through hands-on experiments growing a variation of organisms, testing and learning from those processes, creating new fabrication methods and living material processes.
Currently, Thora is a Ph.D. candidate at Newcastle University in the school of architecture, planning, and landscape, where she is also a design, led researcher working on the Thinking Soils project, an EPSRC funded project that is exploring the design potentials of living materials that respond to physical forces in their environment. Thora holds a masters degree in Advanced Architecture from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Spain, and a bachelor’s degree from the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB), UK.
Thora H Arnardottir
Co-founder
Biological designer &
doctoral researcher
Jessica is a biomaterial research and designer, with a background in Architecture and a passion for nature. Jessica has been nourishing her passion for bio-design through personal experimentation with biology for design applications. She now works from the cultivation and analysis of microorganisms and uses computational design strategies to formulate her research and expose her findings through human-scaled objects, giving her a work a range of scales varying from wearables and product design to proposals of architectural and urban metabolic systems.
Jessica’s focus lies in fusing handcraft and digital fabrication techniques with natural materials and living systems in order to bring nature and science to the people, and shift the existing production model to one that is more coherent with nature's cycle.
Jessica holds a masters degree in Advanced Architecture from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Spain, as well as an M.Eng in Environmental Design and a B.A in Architecture from the University of Nottingham.
Jessica Dias
Co-founder
Metabolic environmental
designer & fungal researcher
Noor El-Gewely is a Graduate Architect and Bio-Digital designer currently based in Sydney, Australia. She identifies as a Global Nomad, being American-Egyptian having grown up in Norway and lived extensively in Australia.
Her research interests lies at the nexus of material science, digital fabrication, and computational design. Her aim is to understand how principles from Nature and material behaviour can inform design solutions, and be applied using contemporary fabrication techniques in the pursuit of novel aesthetics. El-Gewely’s work spans across scales, from architectural design, installations, product design, and wearables.
Noor holds a masters degree in Advanced Architecture from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Spain, as well as a Masters in Architecture (with Honors) from the University of Sydney, Australia and she received her Bachelor of Design (Architecture).
Noor
El-Gewely
Co-founder
Biodigital designer &
global nomad
Ingried is a designer and eco-innovation researcher with 5 years of working experience in the fashion industry. Her main focus is to research and develop sustainable and innovative materials to help build the foundations for a sustainable evolution in the fashion industry encouraging a circular business model approach.
Her career experience led her to a growing awareness for an ethical and sustainable industry. Ingried's current research emphasis ranges from sustainable material transformation, textile waste solutions, and the introduction of technology innovation using computational design and digital fabrication.
Ingried holds a masters degree from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia with an emphasis in innovation research and digital fabrication, as well as a B.A in Apparel Design from Savannah College of Art and Design.