Spanish architect Alberto Villanueva's Mars Utopia concept would see the planet transformed into an inhabitable environment using towers formed by bacteria (+ slideshow). More
Teams from MIT Media Lab and the Royal College of Art have used bacteria to design a "bio-skin" fabric that peels back in reaction to sweat and humidity (+ slideshow). More
Designer Ori Elisar has developed a bacterial ink and grown typographical symbols in a petri dish. Here are more stories featuring microbes, including a lamp powered by glowing octopus bacteria (pictured), clothes grown from single-cell organisms and cheese made from the sweat and tears of celebrities.
Jerusalem designer Ori Elisar has used a bacteria-based ink to grow a Hebrew alphabet in the lab for his Living Language type experiment. More
Graduate shows 2015: Royal College of Art graduate YunTing Lin has created a new material from plant fibres and naturally fermented cellulose, and used it to form a storage system and speakers (+ slideshow). More
Designer and researcher Neri Oxman has successfully 3D-printed one of her "wearable skins" and filled its hollow tubes with a bacterial luminescent liquid to represent how it could host photosynthetic organisms (+ slideshow). More
A biologist and a designer are developing a bacteria and yeast "micro-factory" that could one day enable consumers to grow their own products at home (+ slideshow). More
Royal College of Art student Paul Gong has imagined how synthetic biology could be used to modify the human body so it can consume and digest rotten food. More
Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen explains how she created a lamp powered by bioluminescent bacteria usually found on octopuses, in this movie filmed in Eindhoven. More
Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen has filled a glass tube with octopus bacteria to create a zero-electricity lamp that glows blue when disturbed (+ movie). More
Designer Sammy Jobbins Wells has stretched material made by bacteria over structural frames to create a set of wearable objects (+ slideshow). More
Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is exploring ways of using bio-luminescent bacteria found in jellyfish and mushrooms to create glow-in-the-dark trees that could replace street lights. More
Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: Suzanne Lee of BioCouture explains how she makes clothes that are "grown using bacteria" in this movie filmed at the Wearable Futures conference in London in December. More
Edinburgh College of Art student Peter Trimble has built a portable machine for manufacturing furniture from sand, urine and bacteria (+ slideshow). More
News: American biotechnology company Bioglow has applied synthetic biology processes to create plants that glow, which its founder claims are "truly the first of their kind." More
Bacteria from personalities including artist Olafur Eliasson, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and chef Michael Pollan have been used to make human cheese as part of an exhibition about synthetic biology in Dublin. More
Buildings in the future could feature floors embedded with synthetic bacteria that eat dirt and clean your feet, according to this project by design student Tashia Tucker (+ slideshow). More
To prove that germs aren't all bad, Paris-based studio Bold-design came up with an activity kit that uses bacteria to turn sand from the beach into stone souvenirs (+ slideshow). More
Berlin designer Jannis Hülsen upholstered this stool by using bacteria to grow a cellulose skin over its surface. More
Dutch Design Week: Dutch designer Jelte van Abbema won the €10,000 Rado Prize at the Dutch Design Awards last week for a body of work including Symbiosis, an experimental project that involved printing with bacteria. More