Yuya Zhou’s Genesis and the design of impermanence
A series of bioplastic lighting questions the permanence of design objects, wondering if maybe transience could be an equally interesting approach.
Most design objects are inherently designed for permanence. Industrially produced objects are made to last, their form is fixed, materials are durable, and overall, a promise against time. Yuya Zhou‘s Genesis series, presented at Isola Design District during Milan Design Week 2026, refuses that premise entirely. Her works are made to change, to refuse stability, and they are made, in fact, to fail.
Genesis consists of 7 light objects, consisting of 4 table lamps, 2 pendant lamps, and a floor lamp, each cast from a self-formulated bioplastic composite of starch, gelatin, glycerin, water, and edible pigments. These substances are the materials of kitchens and living systems, substances that dissolve, soften, and react to their habitat.
Gallery
Open full width
Open full width
Genesis and the design of impermanence:
Sensory depth
The resulting material looks similar to latex, holding a certain transparency and viscosity. Each lamp holds within it a series of suspended air bubbles that often appear during biomaterial casting and that were intentionally retained. When light passes through, these micro-voids scatter and diffuse it unevenly, producing a warmth and optical complexity that recalls amber or honey.
Controlled instability
Zhou grounds the project in Taoist cosmology, specifically in the idea that existence is not a state but a process, that what we call a thing is really a moment within a continuous cycle of formation and dissolution. The bioplastic is not formulated for stability but for what Zhou calls “controlled instability“: by adjusting ratios of its components, she shifts the material between softness, elasticity, brittleness, and structural tension. After fabrication, environmental conditions continue the work, creating deformations or colour changes.
What this means in practice is also that no two pieces are identical, and no single piece will remain identical to itself either. The works are not editions in the conventional sense, but become one-offs even if following the same processes, defined by the designer as “non-repeatable outcomes of process, matter, and time.”
Seeing the work in progress
The 7 pieces are organised as a sequential lifecycle rather than a collection of fixed designs. Early works in the series are softer and more fluid, emphasising openness and dispersion, with light moving loosely through the material. Later pieces develop denser structures, stronger optical depth, and compression, as though the matter itself has accumulated experience. Moving through the series is also moving through Zhou’s process, reading its narrative, and watching a time-lapse of the material’s evolution.
The curatorial context
Genesis was shown in an exhibition called “No space for waste,” which brought together works focused on circular materials, waste transformation, and experimental approaches to matter. Zhou’s series is placed in conversation with the broader movement in design about post-extractive material thinking, a shift away from materials chosen purely for their workability, and toward materials that carry their own logic, history, and behaviour to work with. What is very contemporary and important about this series is that the designer does not present her material as a solution, but as a completely different proposition based on new aesthetic and conceptual principles, instead of a banal plastic alternative.
