Jiwei Zhou – Guest researcher [MI] Lab

Jiwei will be a guest researcher in Caradt Material Incubator Lab for the next six months. She is currently a PhD researcher at TU Delft.

Zhou is a designer and design researcher. She is fascinated by materials and the experiences they evoke in people. Her design practice usually starts with new materials. It focuses on the experiences that these materials bring to human society, and on the social implications of these experiences.

Bio-based materials, ‘growing design’, and living artefacts are Jiwei’s main research areas. As a PhD student at the Materials Experience Lab at the Delft University of Technology, she studies ‘habitabilities of living artefacts’. The purpose of her current design practice is to raise critical questions about our social relationships with living materials. She works with photosynthetic microorganisms which are in a mutualistic relationship with humans, investigating ways to enhance their expressions of wellbeing. By doing so, the research promotes ‘habitabilities’ both for humans and for our living “fellow inhabitants”.