Clothes rely on supply chains & commoditized garments. Designers at Barcelona’s Fabricademy use biomaterials to “grow” & “print” the wardrobe of the future, from grass or mushroom garments to algae or kombucha “leather”.

Students conduct innovative research to create innovative bioplastics and contribute their recipes to an Open Source library of formulas. They use plants, insects and bacteria as dyes and 3D printing and milling to create fabrics with geometries precisely designed to perform.

Anastasia Pistofidou, co-founder of the innovative lab, doesn’t believe that everyone will be able to print their own clothing, but she does think that anyone with access to modern digital fabrication tools (like those at the Barcelona Fab Lab where the program is based) can create print textiles that can be worn and recycled and reused again and again.

The textile industry is the second most polluting after oil, and contributes to 20% of water pollution worldwide, but Pistofidou believes in order to make change one has to create new materials and machines that can work within the current system.