Carolina Obregón

Designers guide for Bio-Composite exploration.
The comprehensive Compobast Fibres guide is here for all sustainable designers who are in search of information and guidance through the world of old-new materials. We would like to bring you a resource you can glide through with ease and comfort, finding all the information needed for your environmental and sustainable practices and design criteria. This guide aims to introduce the product and fashion designers to the idea of “the composite” as a structural, shapable material, useful for producing both flat and organic forms, and to suggest possibilities for replacing conventional fibers with natural fibers and biopolymers. Our experiments are by no means comprehensive, as material science in this area is relatively new and samples of the polymers expensive and challenging to use in our conventional workshop setting. Having said that, we feel it is important for designers to jump on board and start experimenting in this area, and join in the conversation about bio-composites and bio-plastics. Designers’ form-giving knowledge, plus a willingness to conduct creative hands-on trials, is a valuable contribution to the field. It can support and even direct material scientists toward developing the most useful materials.