Dutch Design Week 2014: Textile designers create a living colour palette

Eindhoven – At Dutch Design Week 2014 Berlin-based studio Blond & Bieber presented Algaemy, a collection of textiles and accessories printed with biodynamic pigments derived from various species of micro-algae.

Essi Glomb and Rasa Weber, the duo behind Blond & Bieber, worked with specialists from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Microalgae to develop a range of biodynamic pigments designed for silk-screen printing textiles. The dyes are made from living material and change in response to sunlight. A pale pink, for example, might change to a carmine red before eventually becoming a warm orange. Each species of micro-algae produces a different colour pigment – from sapphire blue to deep red.

The Blond & Bieber project examines the potential of micro-algae, pointing out to applications such as CO2 absorption, energy production and nutrition. The designers have created an analogue textile-printing laboratory that creates a self-sufficient cycle of production. Despite this, and although Algaemy offers an alternative to the chemical processes used in the textile industry, the designers don’t want to focus on the sustainable character of their work. 

‘Our way of manufacturing is extremely environmentally friendly, but being green should not be seen as the defining aspect of the collection,’ Essi Glomb tells LS:N Global. ‘For our generation of designers, sustainability has to be something that comes as a standard, not a selling point.’

LS:N Global identified green algae and micro-organisms such as bacteria as the most exciting bio-material innovations in our Future Materials: Top 10 market. For more on Dutch Design Week, visit our Seed and Shows sections.