Good design is about interrogating systems not just creating beautiful chairs, biofabrication designer Natsai Audrey Chieza argued at Dezeen Day.
Chieza agreed with panel moderator and Dezeen co-founder, Marcus Fairs, that she is less interested in designing iconic products and chooses instead to focus on materials and processes, which is the future of the discipline.
"It's not to say that we can't have designers making chairs," said Chieza. "But I think what designers are starting to do is understand that they don't design in a vacuum."
"There is a system at play and maybe what it means to make good design in the future is to interrogate that system, and to really push it," she told the audience at Dezeen Day.
The challenge is working at scale Chieza was speaking on a panel about post-plastic materials, alongside architect Arthur Mamou-Mani and designer Nienke Hoogvliet.
The next step for designers working with new materials, she said, is how to implement their ideas at a commercial scale.
"It's very excited that we have new material systems that are coming but I think designers need to work really hard to determine how we actually scale it for impact," she argued. "That's the challenge for anybody working in the space."
"[Otherwise we] find ourselves working with brand new materials that have so much potential, but actually the business model is broken and we're designing for landfill."

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