High potential of hemp: from farmer to designer

Bio-based materials such as industrial hemp offer a huge opportunity for the manufacturing and construction industries that need to shift to a more circular industry. This requires not only a transformation but new technologies, materials or processing methods, but especially a change of mindset towards chain thinking, circular bio-design, circular business models.

The Vlaio Living Lab Hemp+ aims to create a web of opportunities for the optimal and sustainable value creation from industrial hemp and other sustainable bio-based materials and processes or combinations of these materials. By focusing strongly on changing systems thinking along the entire value chain, supply and demand will be better matched to realize the maximum potential of hemp for the Flemish manufacturing and construction industry.

In addition, designers will also start designing with biological materials, leading to a new emerging design discipline called Biodesign. Here one designs of, with and for nature and thus biological components. These include crops, animals, fungi and even bacteria. In the Interreg North Sea Region project "Building Based on BioBased", not only is research being conducted into the value chains of local biological flows, but the Biodesign process is being developed and applied in concrete cases.