Workshops: Biomaterials together with Heidi Jalkh
From our Design & Sustainability Lab we organize a new workshop, this time with the experimental designer Heidi Jalkh as special guest. The meeting was held on Friday, August 8 in our workshop, with a small group of designers and architecture professionals.
During the activity, Jalkh presented CONQ, a project developed together with Angie Dub that investigates how mineralized biogenic materials, such as seashells, can be transformed into bioceramics at room temperature. These parts offer a sustainable alternative for coatings, with gradients of a single material custom-designed to achieve different mechanical and aesthetic properties.
The workshop combined a theoretical introduction with a practical part in which participants worked directly with the materials to learn about their properties. The environmental and social impact of reusing waste as a resource was also discussed, as well as the potential of biomaterials in regenerative design and local circular economies.
On this occasion we were joined by Sebastián Raimondi, Sofía Suaya, Matías Mosquera, Geraldine Misiuk, Mercedes Balmaceda, Mariela Marina and Romeo Sosa. We closed the meeting with a healthy break in charge of OK.Nutre, with its proposal of conscious eating.
With these initiatives, the Laboratory seeks to open new horizons of exploration in the fields of textiles, architecture, design and interior design, promoting experimentation and interdisciplinary exchange.
Heidi Jalkh is an experimental designer, design educator, researcher and curator, born in Medellín, Colombia, and currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Trained in industrial design, she is a specialist in Logic and Technique of Form and holds a master’s degree in interdisciplinary research through the Open Design program, a collaboration between the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) and the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). His work focuses on materials design, combining his interest in bioinspired and biofabricated, interdisciplinary research and craft-based processes. He leads the research group “Material Systems” and teaches at several national and international universities. In 2022, Heidi received the Humboldt Innovation Award, and in 2024 she was awarded the Bauhaus Earth Experimental Fellowship.