Symbi
2023SYMBI is a calming tactile ball made from grown bacterial cellulose and aquafaba/algae bioleather. Anthropocentric concern with human health has made us question the world we have shaped through design. Symbi questions our material culture, but also how we live with chronic pain - how tactility can help with conditions such as trigeminal neuralgia when a user constantly feels pain - through touch and a soft, calming, tactile feeling.
The necessity of finding alternatives to currently available PVC and PU-based non-biodegradable vegan leathers has led to exploring the potential of utilising commonly perceived as waste bacterial cellulose film from kombucha drink and waste aquafaba. The inside of the ball was stuffed with kapok, which comes from the fibres of a kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra).
Bacterial Cellulose, Aquafaba and Kapok
Payonke
2025
What if the objects in our homes could sense, shift, and adapt like living things?
Payonke explores this possibility through active, hygromorphic materials that contain Bacillus subtilis spores, probiotic bacteria that respond to moisture by changing shape, much like pinecones opening in the rain.
Rooted in the tradition of pająki ludowe - Polish folk mobiles, traditionally symbolic in their movement and once believed to bring prosperity into the home, this project reinterprets the craft using living materials to create responsive, interlocking forms. These structures function as natural indicators of indoor humidity, encouraging us to rethink our living spaces as adaptive, health-conscious ecosystems.
Payonke proposes a new design language in which materials possess their own agency, and inert objects transform into dynamic systems that shape-shift alongside us, turning our homes into spaces of ongoing visual interaction between human and microbial life.
Central Saint Martins @mabiodesign
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Cork, B. Subtilis spores
NOU
2024Designing Rainwater: Harvesting Regenerative Water Systems for Enhancement of Local Resources
The Challenge Fund - Central Saint Martins, LVMH & Maison/0
Can Microalgae and rainwater revolutionise the way we think about nutrition and beauty?
What do flamingo, shrimp and salmon have in common? They all get their pink colour from the microalgae they eat. This microalgae not only inspired us as a pigment but as a nutritional value - both for the skin microbiome and brain health benefits. NOU functions both as a body mist preserving the skin microbiome and as an ingestible spray for mental well-being.
The cultivated microalgae species, known for their health benefits, have a pink hue with floral tones and vanilla scents, making them nourishing to spray on the skin and to taste.
Central Saint Martins @mabiodesign
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Team:
Weronika Turowska
Elie Al-Marji
Andrea Carrera
Teresa Colombo
Shom Shah
Xinnuo Du
Peichin Lin
Fiona Fu
Yingying Lu
Microalgae: H. pluvialis, D. salina
Terraria
2024In 2150, as the climate crisis fuels population-food-pessimism and soil loss, can we still use soil for cultivating ornamental plants? Through this speculative design project, we envision the decellularized flowers of the future: ornamentals, even terrariums, populated with pigmented bacteria.
Through a process of decellularisation, the structures of preexisting decorative plants are reborn, becoming the scaffolds of new ‘life’; those which will adorn the living spaces of the future.
Central Saint Martins @mabiodesign
@csm_news
Team:
Joanna Cheng | Yuhui Gou | Kirry Li | Harry Mann | Weronika Turowska
S. Marcescens bacteria
Fus
2021Fuss was an investigation about local waste and biomaterial development in connection to Aberdeen - a northeast Scottish city.
ABERDEEN WAS ONCE THE OIL CAPITAL OF EUROPE - What do we do now to make the city more sustainable? What waste do we generate in Aberdeen?
Considering the immense scale of annual coffee waste: 500,000 tons in the UK and 40,000 tons in Scotland, according to Circular Coffee, the design concept emerged as a sustainable response. With Aberdeenshire home to 10 whisky distilleries, the vision materialized into a stool crafted from locally sourced coffee grounds collected from nearby cafés, combined with whisky barrel staves repurposed from a local distillery.
Whiskey staves, coffee grounds
Weronika Turowska
Weronika Turowska is a biodesigner, material researcher, and maker. She is a graduate of the MA Biodesign programme at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and currently works as a Senior Research Assistant within the HBBE Living Construction Group at Northumbria University. She is part of the UKRI BBSRC-funded project Sustainable Style for Clean Growth: Innovating Textile Production through Engineering Biology.
During her postgraduate studies, Weronika investigated bacterial spore-based hygromorphic materials and questions of material agency through contemporary craft and indoor environments. Her previous projects also include the use of bacterial cellulose in the design of tactile objects intended to alleviate chronic nerve pain, presented during the New European Bauhaus in Brussels.
Through UAL’s MEAD Fellowship, she additionally explores ways of making biodesign knowledge more accessible by developing design-oriented protocols and alternative approaches that enable designers to engage with living matter beyond traditional laboratory environments.
- Exhibitons:
BioFab Fair, Biofabricate, London Design Festival, London UK 2025
Soil, Toil, Table, Lethaby Gallery, London UK 2024-2025
New European Bauhaus Festival, Brussels Belgium, 2024
Revolutions, Central Saint Martins, London UK 2023-2024
New Designers, Business Design Centre, London UK 2023
Graduate Degree Show, Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen UK 2023- Exhibitons:
© Weronika Turowska, Blunik Studio, 2026