Design with a Conscience

Life and death (or decomposition) is a recurring theme in Khew’s work. As an architect, she spent many years in a field that values longevity and structural permanence. But with the growth of the human population and changing cultural habits, the need for structures that resist the passage of time has waned. Perfectly viable objects with years left of use get tossed, torn down, and labeled as trash.

According to recent studies, more than 30% of global waste comes from construction, creating an estimated 2.2 billion tons of waste annually (more than 600 million tons in the United States alone). Whether it’s flipping a house, accommodating urban sprawl, or building the latest, greatest, best new thing, the world is constantly mining more materials to keep up with demand.

This statistic—and the attendant accountability she felt as an architect creating structures that contribute to this waste—weighed heavily on Khew. “As a practitioner, as a designer, the act of creating something is problematic, because it produces more things in the world,” she said. “Any responsible designer will go through this conflict: Should I build more? Should I make more? How does one make without increasing the carbon footprint of the act of making?”

After a pivotal assignment to build housing on what was obviously polluted ground challenged Khew’s personal ethics, she left architecture, focusing instead on teaching, research, and developing her own projects aimed at mitigating waste and experimenting with materials grown in nature rather than mined from the earth. Among other biomaterials, mycelium ended up figuring prominently in her work thanks to its biodegradable, self-healing, and regenerative properties.

Around the same time, Wesleyan began offering an IDEAS (Integrated Design, Engineering, Arts & Society) minor, which would eventually be housed within the newly launched College of Design and Engineering Studies. When CoDES was looking for a professor to lead product design, Khew’s unique approach and wide-ranging experience—from architecture to art installations to materials-driven design of new products and tools—won her the position.

“Product Design was initiated to expand the design and engineering curriculum at Wesleyan and at the same time plug into the robust arts infrastructure already in place,” explained Director of CoDES and Professor of Art Elijah Huge. “Yu Nong had a history of collaborating with scientists. She was an ‘expansive designer’—having worked at a broad range of scales from small objects to buildings. That versatility seemed really well-suited to working with liberal arts students.” 

In class, Khew imbues lessons on design with an approach that challenges her students to consider not only the form and function of their designs, but the full life cycle of their objects, including ecological impact over time and potential second or third lives after the initial use is exhausted.

Students in Fundamentals of Design (Product Design I) learn the basics of form, hierarchy, pattern, and structure, and are assigned to design a sound vessel. Regenerative Design (Product Design II) students come up with 36 unique ideas for miniature chairs made out of found materials (e.g., bottle caps, toothbrushes, paper clips) and then create an “object for resting” out of composite materials that are recycled or reclaimed. And in Designing with Living Systems: Soft + Hairy, students begin working with mycelium, exploring how living organisms can be used as design materials and introducing them to zero-waste design methodology. 

“We accept that glass and metal and concrete are materials used in architecture, but we don’t think about using living, growing materials to build,” Khew said. “In class I teach students to ask questions of what we see around us and to challenge what we see as ‘the norm.’ For example: How do you reintroduce value into a material that is regarded as garbage? How do you change people’s perception of the object?”

The curriculum doesn’t just rely on theory or imagination. Having experience with startups (among other things, Khew has invented a custom set of tools for use in biodesign and a machine that combines 3D plastic waste with organic materials like coffee grounds to create a new 3D modeling material), Khew also grounds her classes in real-world skill-building that she hopes will serve her students in whatever career path they eventually choose. From lessons in the necessity of iteration and testing, to the practicality of building models and scaling up for mass manufacturing, to effective pitching to potential investors and the end user—Khew is aware that even the most groundbreaking new product will have no impact if it cannot reach the intended audience. 

Over the summer of 2025, Khew took on a commission from a local organic farm to create a temporary structure called a sukkah for their traditional Jewish Sukkot celebration in the fall. A sukkah requires at least three walls and a roof made of natural materials, a partial opening to allow sunlight through, and room to accommodate celebrants who can sit, eat, and spend time with one another in the ad hoc dwelling.

The sukkah provided an opportunity to further test Khew’s work with mycelium. She proposed a living structure made primarily of mycelium that could easily be composted after the ceremony—a temporary pavilion that could fulfill its purpose for the time needed, decompose easily and with minimal waste, and could even potentially create fruiting mushrooms that could be consumed during the event or after. 

Over the course of four months, she worked with student research assistants (who came from majors in art studio, computer science, film, and more) out of the new biodesign lab in the Fries Arts Building and consulted with CoDES colleagues in Computer Science (Sonia Roberts) and Engineering (Gordana Herning) to create a stack of tubes made of mycelium grown and grafted inside of cotton linen tubing made with the new Shima Seiki computational knitting machine in the Textiles Hub of Exley. The process involved sourcing mycelium from a local farmer; using gravity, tension, and the natural growing properties of the mycelium to create the desired shape without relying on wasteful formwork; and multiple tests, prototypes, and challenges.

The constant problem-solving and unexpected setbacks along the way might seem discouraging to most, but Khew seems undaunted, cheerfully reassuring each time that this is part of the design process and that a certain amount of unpredictability and chaos is to be expected when working with natural materials. It’s as much a lesson in design, as it is a rumination on life in all its forms.

“I teach my students to accept that the objects that they make—especially in [the course] Soft and Hairy—are not 100% in their control. It might not turn out the way they want it to, because they are co-authoring [with the biomaterials]. They’re not the only designer in their project; the mycelium has say as well.”—Professor Yu Nong Khew