Zoa™: a new animal is born (graphic t-shirt)
Why is this project worthy of an award?
The Zoa™ graphic t-shirt, commissioned for the MoMA exhibition ‘ITEMS: is fashion modern’, was designed to be a provocation for designers everywhere to re-think leather, materials and manufacture more broadly. Freed from the structure of animal skin, biofabrication enables design and manufacture capabilities that are impossible with traditional leather. In the case of this shirt, Zoa™ assumes the form of liquid bioleather. Able to morph to any shape and combine with other materials, Zoa™ enabled construction of a prototype garment through liquid assembly instead of stitching. Zoa™ bioleather materials are made through a unique biofabrication process. At Modern Meadow we design the DNA of yeast to produce collagen - the building block of animal leather. We ferment the yeast, much like you would brew beer, to grow billions of collagen-producing cells, we then purify and assemble the collagen into unique material structures. We remain referential to, but unbound by, the traditional constraints of leather. The choice to reconceive the graphic t-shirt, as a vehicle to show our prototype material for the first time, was multifaceted. As an item of clothing it has long been the garment of revolutionaries. A carrier of movements and messages. However, in this instance instead of the medium being the message, Modern Meadow made the material the message. Rather than create a 2D sheet of leather that would mimic an animal hide and apply it in the same way you would existing materials, we started with a liquid bioleather and fundamentally questioned what form leather materials can take. Eschewing the expected traditional leather product such as a handbag, shoe, or jacket, we took a t-shirt, deconstructed it, replaced sections with different textiles, and joined it back together using Zoa™ liquid leather. These joins are in fact ‘stitch-free’ seams. Removing the need for glue entirely the Zoa™ liquid leather is both the design element, manufacturing process and the material. It simply integrates into other textiles forming new composites as well as filling the standalone spaces between. The Zoa™ design references animal leather grain patterns, exploding their scale to play with an abstraction unseen in the natural world. The prototype embodies a design process informed and inspired, but not bound by nature. The Zoa™ graphic t-shirt is representative of the work of the multidisciplinary team at Modern Meadow. The company was uniquely founded at the intersection of design, biology and engineering. Throughout history, material innovation has marked our progress. In the The Stone Age we mastered natural materials like leather, silk and wool, the Plastics Age brought us synthetic polymers, and the Information Age unlocked life itself: DNA. We are now able to tap into nature’s tool kit to create advanced materials ushering us into a new era: The Biofabrication Age. The Zoa™ graphic t-shirt envisions a world of biofabricated materials that provide infinite design possibilities and, at scale, will have a lighter footprint on the planet.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
By building a material from the protein up, Modern Meadow is able to biofabricate materials that exist beyond traditional leather. Able to be any density, hold to any mold, create any shape, take on any texture, combine with any other material, or be any size, Zoa™ is grown with the intention to transform design of materials and future products. This is a huge leap forward in the industry of making materials for consumption, whilst continually working to minimize our footprint. In short, Modern Meadow is growing bioleather materials in a lab using a patented new biofabrication technique without harming animals and with a goal to reach lower inputs of land, water, and greenhouse gas emissions as we scale. The research that led to the development of the Zoa™ t-shirt was instrumental in an entirely new collection of material prototypes - all based on the principle of creating material samples that would be impossible to create with traditional leather. Imagine nanofibers of bioleather ‘ ‘mist’ sprayed onto the surface of silk, different colours of liquid bioleather ‘marbled’ together and bioleather ‘painted’ like lace. All of which culminated in September 2017, when the Zoa™ brand was unveiled to the public as part of a pop-up exhibit in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. The series of material prototypes presented were intended to begin a broader conversation about the design and manufacturing possibilities made possible with biofabrication. The launch of Zoa™ bioleather materials effectively validates a critical moment for the biofabrication movement, which represents the union of design, biology, and materials science to innovate the next generation of sustainable advanced consumer products. Modern Meadow’s bioleather materials – Zoa™ – introduce a new material paradigm, empowering designers to create novel products with properties that previously weren’t available. Modern Meadow has been at the forefront of the biofabrication movement since its inception. In time, we anticipate that Zoa™ will have advantages over livestock production in terms of land, water usage, and CO2 emissions. Our process is still in development and we are using Life Cycle Analysis as a guide to ensure that our process is optimized to be maximally efficient and as environmentally friendly as possible as we scale. Finally, the Zoa™ T-shirt was created in house by a team of multidisciplinary designers, with incredible support from the scientific team. These new technologies and materials are going to necessitate the need for designers to move into new spaces and to radically rethink how we make things and what we make. The culmination of this project resulted in the piece being acquired by MoMA for its permanent collection. We feel this is indicative of a new and emerging era for design where nature is a collaborator in our material and product futures.
Who worked on the project?
Modern Meadow Design Team led by Chief Creative Officer Suzanne Lee, Team Lead for Materials Design Amy Congdon, Research Associate Callie Clayton, Research Associate Morgan Schneider, with the support of Hemanthram Varadaraju and the materials and technology teams.
View the project video: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b01dudnge3vmdnu/AAA5kSpVDFFIQksXaVDrfOE1a/Zoa%20Intro%20Video?dl=0&preview=ZOA_WEBSITE_PREVIEW_1280x720.mp4
