Biomaterial Exploration

Biomaterial Exploration

Bio-based materials here refer to using ingredients that are derived from living (or once-living organisms), most of which in our case are the regular suspects in your kitchen such as corn flour, agar agar and kitchen waste such as orange peel and used coffee grounds. Needless to say, the workshop set up looks very much like a cooking class.

Participants were introduced to the fundamentals of what makes a material – polymers, plasticizer, fillers and expanding agents; and how the different quantities of the same ingredients will affect the physicality of the final material. During the workshop, the participants were also encouraged to pick up materials from around the area such as fallen leaves and flowers that could be added into their material to give it the extra texture, colours and even structure. The outcome of the workshop was very interesting as many different variations of materials were produced. While most of the participants got excited about using fallen leaves and flowers to make creative compositions in their material, some others came up with creative ways to add the flowers into the heating process thereby ‘accidentally’ extracting the colour pigment from the flowers and giving their material that extra tinge of colour (biochrome).

The objective was to allow the participants to explore, experiment and create different variations of biomaterials.

for People: Creating awareness about the environment and what we do with our wastes through this biomaterial workshop

for Planet: Reduce the amount of waste from going to the landfill

for Profit:

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2016 - Present

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