News

Growing Materials, Growing Ideas: Inside the BioMaker Studio

Published: 6.1.2026

At Aalto University’s BioMaker Studio initiated by Ena Naito, students and researchers experiment with living materials, from algae to mycelium, creating an open, interdisciplinary space where design, biology, and collaboration grow together.

A table with bowls, bottles, and cups. People are working with various items, including a bottle of dark liquid. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

In December, we visited the Biomaker Studio to talk to CoDe alumna Ena Naito. What started as an interest during her Master’s program turned into a space where people can explore design with living organisms and find new possibilities to collaborate and experiment right on the Aalto Campus. During this visit, Juni Sun Neyenhuys, a student from the Contemporary Design program, was also giving a workshop on producing your own seaweed yarn, using everyday tools but also her own design: an open-source wet fibre spinning machine.

A classroom with a presentation on seaweed. A person sits at a desk with a laptop. Students watch the screen. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

Shelves with various kitchen and laboratory items including measuring jugs, bowls, petri dishes, and utensils.

When you first enter the Biomaker Studio, you are entering a space in which you are allowed to experiment: there are biomaterial tests by students drying in petri dishes on the shelves; an aquarium is hosting Cladophora, a green algae also commonly known as Mermaid’s beard. If you follow a slight smell of vinegar you will find a growing SCOBY, an acronym for “symbiotic culture of bateria and yeasts” with which you could make kombucha or sheets of leather-like material. Inside sealed boxes, there are blocks of mushroom material, while bright green spirulina bubbles in small transparent tanks. The tools around the room could be found in kitchens or laboratories: an old microscope, a kettle, a dehydrator, a fridge, pipettes, mittens, a blender… Many have been donated by other workshops, bought second-hand, or brought in by students themselves in order to start creating. There are big tables in the centre, chairs for people to gather around, and books on biodesign, mycelium, and more-than-human collaboration.

The founder of this place, Ena Naito, spent months researching and visiting biodesign labs and studios around Europe in order to create something very special: a place that would be open to all kinds of students, with fewer restrictions than other workshops, allowing students to independently as well as collaborativey explore the possibilities of working with new materials that could help us address climate change, engage in more ethical production, or simply inspire new ideas. If they are safe, students are even welcome to bring their own foraged materials to experiment with, such as algae from the Baltic Sea shore or mushrooms to dye natural fibres.

A person adjusts a syringe on a 3D printer in a workshop setting. Other people are working in the background. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

An aquarium with green algae and illuminated by red and white LED lights. Three transparent dividers are visible. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

A person with a braid holds purple alginate string. They wear a yellow knitted garment. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

Thanks to funding from the EU’s CoCoon program as well as the Sustainability Action Booster, the studio continues operating, also opening its doors to the public and allowing anyone to join for free workshops and lectures given by fellow students, faculty, or guest lecturers. Today, Juni Sun Neyenhuys is giving her second workshop in this space, in which participants can create their own seaweed-based yarn. Juni is a second-year student in the MA in Contemporary Design at Aalto and has developed much of her practice around ways of working with algae to create new materials that could help address problems related to single-use packaging or textiles. As part of the workshop, she gives a short introductory lecture on kinds of seaweed and the wet fibre spinning process and then proceeds to show the interdisciplinary mix of participants (who range from engineering to business and costume design students, as well as professionals) how to start preparing the base mixture for wet-spinning fibres.

Ena Naito makes sure the workshop participants have what they need. She also studied the Contemporary Design MA program and after graduating in 2022, started her doctoral research at Aalto investigating makerspaces for cultivating sustainability competencies, especially by integrating biodesign into learning processes. She continues to run the Biomaker Studio, an evolving prototype of her research, lowering the barriers to knowledge around biodesign.

The studio has hosted workshops by other students, such as Harvey Shaw’s workshop on mycelium, as well as its first summer school in 2025, in which students could explore root textiles. The summer school was hosted in collaboration with IAAC, Cofac, ISMAT, FabLab Reykjavik and Uni of Porto. The results were presented at the Living Panels exhibition as part of the larger Design for a Cooler Planet exhibition at Aalto throughout Helsinki Design Week. At the end of 2025, the Biomaker Studio also hosted the Experimental Design course of the Contemporary Design MA for the first time. Under the guidance of Professor Barbara Pollini and Ena Naito, students were encouraged to work with very different materials and processes, both individually and in groups.

Three containers with green liquid, labelled 'Erika' and other names, connected to tubes on a laboratory table. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

Hands holding a white paper cup wrapped with clear string. The background is blurred and features warm tones. — Photo: Carla Rotenberg

One of the first interdisciplinary Lab-Maker-Studios dedicated to biodesign in Finland, right on the Aalto campus, invites people to make and design in the most intuitive and open way possible. Depending on what is needed for the next project or what students want to explore, the space keeps evolving, growing organically, - just like the organisms it hosts.

To stay in the loop about upcoming workshops and events, follow @biomakerstudio.

Aalto University Bioinnovation Center

To achieve human wellbeing in planetary boundaries, we need new sustainable solutions to wisely use our natural resources. The Bioinnovation Center especially focuses on innovations in sustainable bio-based materials, with special focus on textiles and packaging.