Like a sourdough culture that builds structure instead of flavour, Acetobacter bacteria are fed a simple glucose broth (Hestrin–Schramm medium) and left undisturbed to spin a thick rubbery pellicle at the air–liquid interface. Food-safe, biodegradable sheet grown entirely from pantry ingredients.
Vapes are banned in 35 countries, yet bubble artists need white fog. This Singapore–Austria collaboration 3D-prints a palm-sized tool housing three ultrasonic humidifier discs (108 kHz, 5 µm droplets) powered by a small battery — mist without combustion, legal everywhere, runs on water alone.
The same pellicle that ferments kombucha can be pressed paper-thin (transparent, breathable, surprisingly tough) or built thick and dehydrated into a leather-like sheet. Like reducing a stock to a glaze — the thinner the slice, the more delicate the material. Dyeable, embossable, fully compostable.
Server hard drives spin at 7,200+ RPM from the factory. CentriDrive harvests those motors, couples them to a 3D-printed rotor, and adds an Arduino + ESC controller inside a repurposed lunchbox. Open hardware meets frugal science — a full lab instrument from discarded tech.
Two open-source microscope platforms built from 3D-printed flexures, a Raspberry Pi camera, and a handful of optics. Like a sourdough recipe shared across borders — the files are free, the community maintains them, and makers in Singapore, Africa, and Europe bake the same batch.
A DIY machine that strips PET bottles into ribbons, feeds them through a heated nozzle, and extrudes usable 3D printer filament — a complete fermentation loop for plastic. Built from Ender3 parts and community know-how, turning single-use waste into raw material for the next make.
A visible blue laser selectively caramelises the surface of bread, chocolate, rice paper, and cheese — burning patterns pixel by pixel without dyes or inks. The Maillard reaction is the ink; the laser is the pen. Produces edible tags, illustrated crackers, and cheesy tardigrades.
Treating kitchen waste like a mise en place for materials science: coffee grounds, cassava starch, rice starch, and agar-agar are cooked, cast, and cured into home-compostable plates, cutlery, and film. The goal is for every potluck to include someone cooking the tableware as part of the food prep.
A citizen-science sourdough project mapping the microbial profile of Singapore's urban environment through wild yeast capture and starter culture analysis. Each neighbourhood starter is a snapshot of local airborne microflora — a living index of the city's microbial diversity, fed and studied in parallel across collaborators.
Southeast Asia produces enormous volumes of fruit surplus and cut-off waste. This project ferments that surplus — rambutan, mango, starfruit, pineapple — into craft ciders and vinegars using wild yeast and a simple airlock. Less like brewing; more like giving a second life to ingredients that got left on the cutting board.
In partnership with SMU's SMU-GROW Project, this project integrates 15+ indigenous edible plants (ulam raja, moringa, bunga kantan, pandan) into urban centres. Like inoculating a substrate with a diverse spore mix — the goal is a city that feeds itself through ecological memory, not just supply chains.
Certain bacteria in soil and sediment oxidise organic matter and release electrons as a byproduct — a living battery. This project builds low-cost MFC chambers from repurposed containers, electrodes, and local soil samples to generate and measure microbial electricity. The Force is, quite literally, alive.