From the archives, May 14, 2024: Natsai Audrey Chieza spent her youth in Zimbabwe in a close-knit extended family where she and her cousins were “in each others’ pockets.” In her teenage years the national economy crashed, necessitating a family relocation to the UK, and she began learning the skill of “not belonging.” Architecture studies proved alienating so she found a way to combine them with her love of fashion (to the consternation of her professors.) Rejecting the prescribed path of a professional architect, she instead pursued a postgraduate program in Material Futures that set her on a path of designing with bacteria. Now, she’s founded Faber Futures, a biodesign studio, and Normal Phenomena of Life, an artful lifestyle and fashion brand that also functions as a working prototype of a new model bioeconomy. She’s spent her whole life quietly not doing what was expected of her, and in this space of outsiderness she’s been very busy creating new paradigms for how we might collaborate with nature and new models for the equitable stewardship of these new biotechnologies. So, in terms of cultural infrastructure, she is an architect after all!
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What’s Natsai been up to?
Natsai was named a 2026 Design Luminary by the World Design Organization. Natsai continues to push the boundaries of biodesign with her groundbreaking work at Faber Futures and Normal Pheonomena of Life. From their recent R&D partnership with Quorum to Prototyping Fit-to-Farm Models for Biomanufacturing: Friesland to their ongoing work with Ginkgo Bioworks on Normal Phenomena of Life, the world’s first biodesign-native lifestyle brand of its kind.
Learn more about Natsai’s current work below!
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