The textile industry is a major contributor to the planetary boundaries being exceeded each year. Bacterial Filamentation as a regenerative design research project envisions a future in which circular materials are bio-manufactured with a minimal consumption of resources by living organisms, thereby counteracting the overuse of planetary resources.

In an automated process, a yarn-like filament made from bacterial cellulose is fermented, harvested, washed, dried and wound up. The filament can be used to produce textiles, which have been explored through weaving and show potential areas of applications—reinforcements, upper materials, soles, but also any type of textile is thereby envisioned. Adding natural colourants to the fermentation process creates vibrant colours and expands the possibilities to design and rethink the common dyeing process.

Re-imagining the production of textile fibres by fermenting cellulose from bacteria in order to reduce reliance on monocultures, deforestation and oil production. A machine is built to automately filament bacterial cellulose in a micro-scale, and envision the scalability of the biofabrication.

“Although bacterial cellulose designs have so far been focused on sheet forms embodying nonwovens structures, there is little or no investigation into how the concepts of co-design and bio-manufacturing can directly form filaments. This leaves a wealth of material applications unexplored.“ (Morrow et al., 2023)