Elsa Gil¶
Let me introduce myself¶
I´m Elsa Gil, an enthusiast of the world.
The year that I'm starting Fabricademy I just graduated from Product Design. In the second year one teacher show me what was Biodesign: I fall in love with it inmediatelly. Everything that I was interested in were integrated in this area. It was in the intersection of design, biology, technology and art is where I found my place as a designer and as a human. It was the place where i could promote everything that I was consciously aware off: sustainability, humanism, ecosystems' health, wealth-being... As I discover that design's area, I developed every single project around it.
But I'm not just a designer. I'm an artist, cooker, friend, traveler, daughter and human being that is fascinated about life. I consider myself as a whole ecosystem with different contexts, links, responses to other organisms...
I love learning and showing how the knowledge can change your life: and that's why I'm here, to show you new projects and perspectives that reveal another way of thinking.
Previous work. Biodesign as my natural way of working¶
I'm going to show you my favorite project that is called Ma-ka
This was my final project at college that was presented at Milan's Design Week the september of 2021.
This project aims to bring closer, raise awareness and teach the wide possibilities of the new material culture. It is an organic and playful macro-textile that brings the shapes and materials from nature into the spaces.
Hear Ma-ka is the sub-project that focuses in the co-creation of the structure. Through educational workshops, participants would learn what mycelium is, how it can be applied to our lifestyles, how we can interact with it. Each piece is going to be bio-fabricated by every single participant. This is the representation that we, all together, can fight climate change.
To developed this project I attended two different courses to learn more about organic materials and how they interact with the environment. One course was called Bio-Upcycling from BiologyStudio and the second one was Mycomaterials: biofabricating with mycellium
One of my favorite part of the design process is creating, but it's not always easy. That's why I combined it years ago with one of my hobbies: sculpting clay. I modeled a series of organic lamps.
During my last year of the degree I participated during my internship in the project Seafood for Thought, led by Smartincircles, where we explore the biomaterials' world. The main ingredient which we worked with was chitin. This is the second biopolymer most abundant in the world, as you can find it in shellfish sells and funghi. We experimented with different recipes and we achieved two types of material: one that looked like an hydrogel and other one more clayey that could be printed in 3D.
I hope you liked my selection of projects :)
Have a great day, Elsa