By Nicholas West
Introduction
“Tinkering with biology leads to insight; insight leads to innovation.” – 2011 North American DIYbio Congress
There is a new movement forming that is quite literally taking a scrappy approach to innovation. By recycling, repurposing, decentralizing and generally “making do” like past generations, a new wave of innovator/entrepreneur has injected the rising open source ethos into an emerging trend of “bio-villages.” It’s an interesting combination of high-tech mixed with old-world frugality that is melding different disciplines together toward a higher purpose of evolution.
Regular readers of Counter Markets are by now aware of our affinity for makerspaces, open source biolabs, DIY remedies, 3D printing and various other topics that we have covered related to decentralized business and innovation.
Equally important as the financial opportunities offered by the groups mentioned above, it is the cultural impact that this philosophy can have in helping to make centralized government structures as irrelevant as possible to our personal success.
It appears that the next step is being taken to combine a variety of disciplines and interests to create something of an eclectic and adaptive business organism that can lead us into a more diverse and dynamic future of self-determination.
Shipping Containers Open For Business and Buildings Made From Fungi?
If there was ever a sign that the barriers to entry in the formally hallowed halls of medicine, science, and technology are rapidly collapsing, it might be found at Shepherd’s Bush Market in west London, UK.
Open Cell is the name of a new collective that operates out of 45 shipping containers that form a courtyard inside Shepherd’s Market, as seen in the image above which introduced this article.
The collective recounts its beginnings in a similar manner to the United States’ Genspace biohacker organization that I featured in Issue 10.
Fed up with a mainstream paradigm consisting of the university-led “tech-transfer channel” where “businesses have to choose between empty labs, costing tens of thousands to equip, or expensive university facilities” the co-founders state their mission to democratize innovation:
"Helene and Tom met while working in biotech labs despite neither having a background in biology. Helene was a designer working on biology in Microsoft Research and Tom was a physicist working on synthetic biology in the University of Cambridge. After collaborating on a number of projects at the intersection of design and science they founded a biotech startup but could not find affordable lab space.
They spent a year searching for spaces, writing proposals, receiving rejections and having negotiations. Finally the team convinced U+i group, a property developer specialising in regeneration, SynbiCITE the UK’s synthetic biology industry and engineering biology industrial accelerator, and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, to support the initiative.
Open Cell’s vision of creating low-cost labspace with a user-centric focus is only possible thanks to our most passionate supporter: Biotop, an Austrian science collective. The group's obsession is modular lab design. Shipping containers are the ideal starting point since they are readily available, easily moved and have a long history of multifunctional use. They provide a flexible testbed where innovative lab designs can be rapidly installed and tested."
In essence, the Open Cell initiative is offering collaboration over specialization, which has become one of the key protectionist impediments to a life bound by the strictures of a purely academic approach.
As quoted above, it is with the support of Biotop’s modular laboratories that lower costs can provide a much greater access to the networks that true innovators so desperately need in order to promote their ideas and test their products.
London’s Guardian newspaper recently featured some of the interesting and potentially game-changing concepts already being researched after just a few months within this new paradigm.
- Vegan cosmetics
- Sustainable bioplastics for use in the fashion industry
- Systems that extract nutrients and energy from wastewater
- A startup that “grows” buildings out of fungi
- Farmers who pollinate crops using swarms of flies controlled with an app
- Biofabrics made from food waste and bodily fluids
- A company developing a new material made of discarded potato peelings from chip companies
The Guardian describes this new wave of innovators as “a mix of engineers, designers, and architects (and) are part of a trend that has seen biotechnology move out of large research institutions and into more informal and unconventional settings, such as community workspaces and even people’s basements and bedrooms.”
Perhaps surprisingly, some mainstream science leaders are touting what could be the dawn of a completely new era:
"'I am completely convinced that a great idea will come out of Open Cell,' says Professor Paul Freemont, co-director of the National UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology and adviser to the project.
'The atmosphere and the feeling of the place is all part of it. It helps break down barriers between people working in different fields and institutions. It provides a completely neutral venue and there is a certain sense of freedom that I think this particular generation of people find very attractive. There’s no doubt about it, it’s going to be a hotbed of creativity.'"
Open Cell stated that they have plans to increase the diversity of their technology, as well as to form even larger sub-collectives, then open up the entire facility for public engagement.
Biotop, the company behind the Open Cell initiative, stresses that what is being done in the UK can be replicated at scale. In their post, which I encourage everyone to read in full, “How to Build a Biolab in 10 Days,” they offer specifics for how they went from Skype call advice to meetings to creating container laboratories in an astonishingly short period of time.
"We just got back from London, where we helped our friends at OpenCell furnish their first container lab.
How did this happen? Well, about a month ago we were contacted by Helene Steiner, who, together with Thomas Meany, is in the process of setting up a container village for small biotech startups in the heart of London. The idea is to provide a professional workspace (10 biolabs, 20 offices, 10 studios for artists and designers, 4 workshop containers, 1 store) to small businesses and startups. She said to us “Hey guys, I saw you are interested in building container labs, we have 10 of them. Do you want to design the interior & layout for the first one and help us build it?”. Of course we agreed, as this would give us a chance to design and test a first prototype of our lab workbench as well as try out different layouts for the container lab. The main challenge here is to fit all the necessary equipment into a small space and still create a nice work environment.
We came together for two weekend workshops and several evening-filling Skype-calls in which we discussed, refined and re-arranged workbenches, appliances and shelving. The space is approximately 12 x 2.2 m in size and needs to accommodate a sink, -80°C freezer, -20°C freezer, fridge, chemical fume hood, BSL2 cell culture hood, CO2 incubator, autoclave as well as space for four people to work and move around."
The story of Biotop and Open Cell should be an inspiration to anyone who feels that these concepts might be too complicated, too costly or too time consuming. When researching this topic, I realized just how open this new approach is for further involvement and innovation. We are in the very formative stages of what could be one of the most impactful trends that could reshape the way we approach maximizing the potential of our local communities while contributing to a wider decentralized global economy.
Additional Resources for DIY Collaborative Projects and Education
Here are some other organizations that I have not covered in past articles, which I feel deserve a mention. As always, please do your own research to determine what is the best fit for your needs and areas of interest.
SoundBioLab
SoundBioLab is a Seattle, Washington-based organization which states that they are “happy to support any ideas within BSL-1 guidelines and assist you with turning them into ongoing projects.” You can see their offerings overview to determine how your own vision aligns. Their website offers a small but diverse list of ongoing projects (please visit for additional links) including:
TOP: The Oxalis Project (TOP) is a meeting place for budding botanists and plant breeders. Their stated goal is to breed new ornamental varieties of these curious plants, and to learn through experiment along the way. They offer plant sales, workshops, walks and talks, on all manner of plant science topics.
Sleight Beer Lab: specializes in running analytical, microbiology/molecular biology, and yeast health/fermentation tests for the brewing community. The lab can perform a variety of tests that include the measurement of basic beer characteristics (e.g. ABV, IBU, SRM, lactic acid), bacterial and wild yeast contamination testing, and yeast viability/vitality tests.
Citizen Salmon: Their mission is to acquire a deeper knowledge of local food origins and thus provide the same opportunity for inquiry to the public. By connecting the information about a salmon’s genes with its birthplace, CS aims to develop a simple tool that citizen scientists may use independently to determine the origin of salmon on their plate. I would add that this is particularly important in an era of GMO salmon that continues to endure a political fight about labeling requirements.
MINISTAT: An open-source, multiplexed chemostat for DIY bio labs. A chemostat permits the culture of cells in a controlled, steady-state environment for optimal growth, and the goal is to create a flexible system that allows the rapid design and implementation of fermentation for microbiology experiment.
Visit the SoundBio MeetUp Group HERE.
DIYbio.org
DIYbio.org was founded in 2008 with the mission of establishing “a vibrant, productive and safe community of DIY biologists.” The group is designed as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Excellent resources can be found throughout the following links.
- DIYbiosphere — take a journey through the sphere of DIYbio-related activities worldwide
- Find local groups, people and meetups near you
- Or dive into the global discussion
- Get an overview of current events from the blog
- Facebook group
The organization offers a clear foundation for what one can expect when collaborating with others. The result from their 2011 European DIYbio Congress is a statement of ethics which is a perfect antithesis to everything we know to be true within the establishment paradigm.
Bioenergy village in Croatia - Lekenik is located in the northern part of the Sisak – Moslavina county. Lekenik has already some well-developed SMEs. With the opening the Business Zone Lekenik and the extension of the business infrastructure, it is expected that the business climate of the municipality will enhance even more.
BioVill is currently a Eurocentric organization that adds energy independence as their focus within the larger DIYbio concept. This is also something we have covered in past issues with BioGas projects and other extremely local initiatives that Brian Berletic has covered while living in Thailand.
Although some might object to BioVill’s rhetoric surrounding issues of climate change and other environmental protection lingo (as well as a bit of European Union funding) at its heart we can find incredibly valuable details about cooperative, local planning to become more self-sufficient.
Producing one’s own heat, electricity, water filtration, and waste management systems greatly decentralizes the powerful control mechanisms supported by regional governments and removes the most basic of human needs as a day-to-day worry.
BioVill also describes their mission in terms which every proponent of a decentralized economy can appreciate.
- The biomass feedstock is produced locally and in a sustainable way
- The power supply from local renewable energies is at least as high as the energy demand of the village
- The heat demand is provided by locally produced biomass or other renewable energies
- The business model allows also consumers, farmers and forest owners to become shared owners of the installations
- The creation of the bioenergy village is based on a high level of public participation
Lastly, the site has an extensive projects and resources page that would be worth your further investigation.
I would recommend that readers who missed last month’s article about forming cooperatives to please visit Brian Berletic’s advice on the topic, “Organizing a Cooperative.” Too often it can be the “business model” that makes or breaks an otherwise valuable project created with positive intent. If not done correctly – and with the right people – it can also allow for pseudo-government organizations to undermine and exploit projects designed with the goal to make such concerns irrelevant.
Closing Thoughts
It has become popular to assume that when one discusses “sustainability,” it is inherently an anti-capitalistic philosophy. Very often it is on the contrary – embedded within that now-political catchphrase is the desire to move toward creative solutions in self-reliance and localization that are very much underpinned by a desire to make money outside of establishment control systems.
We have entered a world now where the terminology has become so politicized that we can easily lose sight of what these words really mean. I know for a fact that many of the projects we are a part of at Counter Markets are designed toward ensuring the longest-term sustainable income at the highest level possible. Others are, in fact, “social projects” or “for purpose” projects. But that doesn’t mean we want to run to the government/corporate Wall Street system of making money and obtaining funding to achieve our goals. The same can be said of the concepts above, which have the noble roots of rejecting the entrenched notions of what it means to be an “expert” in today’s world, and aim to decentralize economies controlled by far too few interests.
With all of the world’s knowledge at our fingertips – and at the fingertips of other creative individuals – now is the best time in human history to form a de facto mesh network of capable humans who can employ the spirit of collaboration and build a structure powerful enough to attract the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.
Are you involved with your own open source project or bio-village? We would love to hear from you and feature your story.
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