Quorum: Prototyping Regenerative Systems for Biodesign – Project Report

A report on evolving microbial consortia, feedstock pathways, and infrastructures fro distributed biodesign.

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Design today is inseparable from extractive systems that deplete soils, fracture ecologies, and externalise harm. To shift course, we need methods that don’t just substitute one material for a biobased alternative, but regenerate the very relationships between land, people, and production.

In this report we translate findings from Quorum, a two-year-long collaborative R&D project into principles and practices for regenerative biodesign. Emerging from a UKRI-supported collaboration between Faber Futures and Evolutor, the report outlines frameworks for rethinking how we design with, from, and with biology. It documents methodologies for building a lab-to-field process that can metabolise local sidestreams into stable pigment production, alongside insights from evolving microbial consortia that consistently produced pigment across varied waste streams. It also sets out proposals for infrastructures that decentralise production, adapt to shifting ecological conditions, and reconfigure design briefs to begin with place-based possibilities rather than top-down standardisation.

Crucially, the report acknowledges that technical advances alone are not enough. It explores the forms of relationship-building, cross-sector collaboration, and systemic innovation required to realise the promise of regenerative biodesign. From reshaping how knowledge circulates, to creating new modes of partnership between designers, scientists, policymakers, and communities, the report proposes methods for the social shifts that must accompany technical change.

This report is more than a record of technical progress—it is an invitation to rethink how design can be rooted in reciprocity with living systems. By aligning process design with ecological models, it proposes pathways to redesign feedstocks, decentralise production, and grow a place-based movement for biodesign.

We invite designers, innovators, policymakers, and communities to join us in shaping this shift—one that begins with ecology and ends with shared responsibility.