Design Strategist in Climate Change
Design Strategist in Climate Change
A platform for
bio-inspired
catalytic paints
to make artworks
that purify air.
MORPHO is a platform that uses bio-inspired catalytic paint to make artworks that can clean air. The concept is a service where a material printer and canvas assembly is delivered to your home, the setup detects the specific composition of VOCs present in your indoor space, and over a period of several days creates a custom canvas with the iridescent paint that targets the detected pollutants.
Our most dangerous exposure to air toxins happens in indoor spaces through Volatile Organic Compounds (Organic chemicals with low boiling points that often evaporate or sublimate as gases from liquids and solids). Many of them are released through ceilings, furniture, paints, etc. Long-term exposure to VOCs can create serious health problems.
The current solutions have shortcomings. They require specific infrastructure, budget, maintenance, or weather conditions to work.
In living creatures, structural coloration is the production of color by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light, sometimes in combination with pigments.
For example, peacock tail feathers are pigmented brown, but their microscopic structure makes them also reflect blue, turquoise, and green light, and they are often iridescent. Source
We collaborated with researches at Harvard Wyss Institute and the Aizenberg Biomineralization and Biomimetics Lab that recreated a synthetic structure bio-inspired by the structural color of the morpho butterfly. Image Source/Image Source
By adding colloids (eg. Au particles) to the synthetic nanostructure, VOCs react and become water, carbon dioxide, and other non-toxic components.
Different Colloids can target different VOCs and give a different base color while maintaining the iridescence through the structural color. Au-Gold (far left), for example, gives a reddish tone.
The service is divided into 4 parts:
Survey - to identify your overall indoor space and artistic preference (canvas size and style) before we ship the printer and special canvas
Analyze - to create a colloid profile given the most prominent VOCs detected in your space
Paint - to create your custom artwork
Return - you keep the canvas and return the printer with the empty cartridges so that others can use it too.
In June of 2019, we presented our product/service platform MORPHO at the BDC Summit at Parsons.
We qualified as a finalist team and got the opportunity to present MORPHO to a full auditorium of members of the design, art, and biology community in MoMA. The project later traveled back to Cambridge, to the Global Community Bio Summit 3.0 hosted at the MIT Media Lab, where it was exhibited. Currently, MORPHO is taking up a residency in the Tanya’s lab at the Wyss Institute, awaiting its next journey.
As part of our presentation, we mounted an exhibition to show our project. Our speculative design was received very enthusiastically, and the conversations we had around the project gave us many considerations for further refinements.
Morpho is the product of various iterations that included the support of amazing people. Special thanks to Jonathan Grinham, Tanya Shirman, Veena Vijayakumar, Daniel Grushkin, Biodesign Challenge Committee, Martin Bechthold, Fawwaz Habbal, Jock Herron, Nabil Harfoush, Janessa Mulepati, Joanna Aizenberg, James Weaver, Jack Alvarenga, Pamela Cabrera, Anahide Nahhal, David Gomez-Gil, Robert Wang, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and the Aizenberg Biomineralization and Biomimetics Lab.
Morpho is a true result of design + engineering. While Tanya Shirman was the brilliant scientist behind the catalytic structural color technology, the team needed to collaborate to understand the desirable, feasible, and viable applications. Maggie crafted the narrative and checked as our science expert, Oliver designed the service platform and designed/engineered an Arduino-powered prototype that demonstrates the mechanism and movement of the main chassis, and I directed the physical product design and 3D printing prototype. A special mention goes to Natalia Reim, for supporting our exhibition in NYC.