By Angela Riechers
ENSCI–Les Ateliers (École nationale supérieure de création industrielle) a French design school located in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, brought a double exhibition to WantedDesign. Diplorama showcases the final thesis projects of 27 students, while Mos(Kit)O focuses on an award-winning collaborative project by a multidisciplinary team in conjunction with the Paris Pasteur Institute. The team is made up of 19 students headed up by Guillian Graves, who teaches biodesign at ENSCI. Students from Paris were brought to New York for WantedDesign and NYCxDESIGN courtesy of French airline XL Airways. This opportunity will support young designers, students and entrepreneurs as they build their international network and growing body of work.

Mos(kit)O
The project focuses on arboviruses, mosquito-borne viruses which often cause severe diseases in humans and are spreading across the globe at an alarming rate due to mosquitoes. The most common method of fighting mosquitoes is through insecticides, which are damaging to the environment. In addition, mosquitoes tend to develop resistance against these insecticides, which diminishes their efficiency even more.

Mos(Kit)O includes a fixed or mobile mosquito trap and a biosilica cellulose composite patch from genetically modified E. coli bacteria for diagnosing which arboviruses are present in the trapped mosquitos. This allows scientists to accurately map and plot out the infestation, to locate and contain the epidemic and then start to vaccinate. It also means better use of pesticides, The project won four awards at the 2016 International Genetically Engineered Machine (IGEM) competition, a worldwide synthetic biology competition.

Guillian Graves, a designer who specializes in new technologies and is a professor of design at ENSCI, said about Mos(Kit)O: “In my classes, we use nature as an art material: for inspiration, which is called biomimicry; to collaborate, which is called bio assistance; and to design, which is called synthetic biology. We must design new technology, not have technology leading the design. We have to incorporate new materials, methodology, and tools for design in the future. The scale is from the microscopic DNA level all the way up to products, services, and the environment. Designers can’t do it alone; we need to change the way the design is taught and make it collaborative among multi-disciplines.”

By Angela Riechers – To provide an insight into our exhibitions, WantedDesign is proud to partner with the SVA MA Design Research program, which pairs students for future-facing careers in research, publishing, education, museums, institutes, design practice, and entrepreneurship or for continued studies in a design-related subject.