THINKING & LEARNING CHALLENGES · BIOFABRICATION

Grow a material, not just a culture.

Explore a SCOBY as a living system, a cellulose-making culture, and a starting point for questions about biology, material design, and the future of what we make.

Start Observing ↓
Watch the TED Talk ↗

WHAT IS A SCOBY?

A living collaboration.

SCOBY stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. In a sweetened tea environment, the culture helps form a cellulose-rich layer at the surface. That visible layer makes an everyday fermentation process a compelling way to observe microbes, systems, and changing materials over time.

Suzanne Lee’s talk invites a bigger question: What could happen if we grow materials instead of manufacturing every material from a fixed raw ingredient?

START SMALL · OBSERVE OFTEN

Set up an observation culture.

Use a clean glass container, sweetened tea that has completely cooled, and a reliable starter culture. Cover the container with a breathable cloth and place it where it can remain undisturbed. For exact supplies and food-oriented steps, use the linked home guide rather than treating this page as a consumption recipe.

Observe

Photograph the surface, note bubbles, color, smell, temperature, and the first appearance of a new layer.

Compare

Record changes over several days. What conditions appear connected to a thicker, more continuous surface layer?

Question

Ask what the culture needs, what it produces, and how a living process might shape a designed material.

Classroom care: Treat the culture as an observation material. Follow local food-safety policies, keep tools and containers clean, do not consume experimental batches, and discard cultures with visible mold.

FROM CULTURE TO MATERIAL

What could this become?

In her TED talk, Suzanne Lee shares experiments with kombucha-based cellulose as a material that can be grown, harvested, dried, and explored as a flexible sheet. Use the talk as a design provocation—not as a promise that every culture will create the same result.

Materials science

How does a wet cellulose layer change as it dries? Compare flexibility, texture, translucency, thickness, and strength.

Design thinking

What qualities would a grown material need for packaging, fashion, art, or practical objects? What tradeoffs would matter?

Systems thinking

Map the inputs, conditions, living organisms, outputs, and waste. Where could a system be made more circular?

DISCUSS & EXTEND

Questions to carry forward

  • When does a living process become a material-making process?
  • What evidence would you collect before claiming one condition grows a better cellulose layer?
  • How could designers work with growth, decay, repair, reuse, and disposal from the beginning?
  • What other everyday materials might be reconsidered through biology?
Explore Suzanne Lee’s Talk ↗

Helpful starting points