| About me | I am Ioana Man, a designer, researcher and educator. With a background in architecture and spatial design, I focus on how biology and biotechnology can transform economies, manufacturing and the built environment. My work spans product development, supply chain management and manufacturing strategy, biotech strategic advisory, and the design of spaces and objects, all the way through to writing academic papers and articles, curating and designing exhibitions, and hosting fermentation-forward meals. From 2019 to 2025, I was Design Lead at Faber Futures, an agency that operates at the intersection of design, biotechnology and society to engage industry, institutions and brands with alternative models for innovation. Before that, I was a Designer in Residence at the Design Museum London and developed a project that reveals the importance of urban food growing for microbial biodiversity. I am Unit Master at the Architectural Association, where I co-lead Intermediate 6, asking students to unpack the interactions between architecture, technology and cultural imaginaries. I am also a project supervisor for the Bio-Integrated Design MArch at UCL London and have been a guest critic at Central Saint Martins, Royal College of Art and others. |
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| Projects | |||||
| Type | Title | With | For | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R&D, Design | Fit-to-Farm Models for Biomanufacturing: Friesland | Faber Futures | Arcadia, Veenweide Atelier | 2025 | Worked with dairy farmers in Friesland, Netherlands, to integrate microbial dyes into agricultural practices. |
| R&D | Quorum | Faber Futures | Innovate UK | 2023-2025 | Biofabrication of microbial dyes using by-products such as oat milk residues and restaurant food waste as sustainable, nutrient-rich feedstocks for pigment production. A collaboration between Faber Futures and Evolutor Ltd. |
| Design | NPOL Gathering Lamp | Faber Futures (with Gingko Bioworks) | NPOL | 2023-2024 | Collaborated with Mitre&Mondays to design and develop a manufacturing strategy to bring to market a circular lighting product made in London using biocement offcuts. Full story here. |
| Research, Design | BIO STORIES | Faber Futures | WEF | 2021-2022 | Helped develop a design-led global stakeholder engagement methodology in collaboration with the Global Future Council on Synthetic Biology in order to bring in dialogue diverse people affecting or affected by synthetic biology. |
| Design | Museum of Symbiosis | Faber Futures | La Biennale di Venezia | 2023 | Designed a mycelium audio installation that brought to life "an imagined future institution that unearths real-world artefacts donated by people shaping the field of biotechnology today." |
| R&D, Design | With Microbes | Design Museum London | 2020-2021 | Worked with microbiologists from the Natural History Museum to sequence and visualise microbial biodiversity supported by community gardens and designed a set of public furniture pieces that enable urban foraging. | |
| R&D, Design | Probiotic Rituals: Soil Care | Connect for Creativity, British Council Residency | 2019 | Hosted microbial rituals to engage with neglected gardens in Belgrade | |
| Design | Garden of Privatised Delights | Unscene Architecture | British Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia | 2019-2021 | Worked on the design of the central room in the British Pavilion 2021 which revealed Garden Squares as "inclusive garden[s] of delights, where you can play, grow produce, cook, work, meet and contemplate." |
| Event | Microbial Space | Wellcome Collection Reading Room | 2019 | Designed and performed a tour of the Reading Room at the Wellcome Collection, which got the audience to inhabit perspectives that problematise historical depictions of microorganisms. | |
| Writing | Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure: a bioscience roadmap for urban ecosystem health | Jake Robinson et al. | arq: Architectural Research Quarterly | 2022 | Brought a design lens to help outline what Microbiome-Inspired Green Infrastructure "entails from a bioscience and biodesign perspective, highlighting the potential dual benefits for human and ecosystem health." |
| Writing | Twenty Important Research Questions in Microbial Exposure and Social Equity | Jake Robinson, Suzanne Ishaq et al. | mSystems | 2022 | As part of a multidisciplinary working group, I contributed to the overall agenda-setting and then focused on how to improve the translation of microbiome research findings to address social equity. |
| Writing | Microbiome of the Built Environment | Present Issue 2: Vulnerability | 2022 | A pandemic-time interview on the many ways humans are entangled with microbial life. | |
