In WINT Design Lab, quantum biology meets industrial design
MESMER01 is an innovative deep tech project by Mimotype, and its design is aiming to create a new physical grammar to make the invisible legible.
Designing for science has a specific kind of problem: visual culture. Most fields have colour associations, material expectations, and languages that audiences already carry in their common cultural knowledge, but deep tech phenomena happen below the threshold of human perception, in protein triplet states and radical-pair dynamics. The designer’s job, in such contexts, is not to represent the science but to invent the representation itself, dealing with the balance between accuracy and intuitive understanding.
MESMER01, developed by Berlin-based WINT Design Lab in collaboration with startup Mimotype Technologies GmbH, is a project that tackles this challenge seriously, creating a new way to visualise the invisible.
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Mimotype’s product is a first-generation hybrid bio-optoelectronic chip which integrates magnetically sensitive fluorescent proteins with advanced semiconductor substrates, using quantum physics to achieve fluorescence and electron transfer at room temperature. Essentially, it is a biological protein that glows, and whose glow can be modulated by a magnetic field, meaning that it can be used for internal imaging and understanding without invasive procedures.
Most quantum biology works only at cryogenic temperatures, making it useless for anything medical, but these proteins can work in a warm, living body. The chip is not a finished product but a demonstrator, a proof of concept for a technology class that could eventually reach wearable biosensors, implantable diagnostics, and soft neumorphic devices.
WINT Design Lab is a studio founded in 2019 by Robin Hoske and Felix Rasehorn, and it operates as an infrastructure for interdisciplinary exchange, collaborating with biology, material science, software, and other project areas directed towards future living scenarios. Their approach is to integrate design while the products are being created rather than as an afterthought, so the MESMER01 biosensor was developed through close engagement with Mimotype’s research team and WINT’s involvement.
The most distinctive feature of the device is a circular opening mechanism that initiates the analytical process, emerging from the functional demands of handling fluid systems. Rotating the sensor opens and closes it, exposing a display that tracks time and visualises the sensor’s development in real time, exposing a process that is, by nature, invisible to the naked eye.
The design choices taken by the studio not only make the technology beautiful as well as functional, but they also make the act of using it commensurate with its significance. The interaction is described by the team as “almost ritualistic,” proposing a physical grammar that celebrates this innovative process and encourages the researcher to enjoy it, insisting on presence and embodiment.
Beyond the physical prototype, WINT has also developed a comprehensive visual language and brand system for Mimotype, including digital interfaces, communication materials, etc. This graphic work has the goal of translating complex science across very different audiences, creating a recognisable brand without compromising technical depth for all stakeholders.
As deep tech keeps developing, the question of how to make quantum biology, synthetic materials and more legible is increasingly relevant. Research that can’t be communicated will struggle to attract partnerships and funding it needs to mature; design is now a useful infrastructure for science, not decoration. MESMER01 is a demonstration of how one can make those tensions work together.
