A team from the Tangible Media Group at MIT’s Media Lab is working with New Balance on a performance fabric that combines biomaterials research with textile design. The result is a material that expands and contracts to help ventilate garments. Aimed at the sportswear industry, the material reacts to body heat, opening and closing flaps around the heat zone to allow sweat to evaporate and cool the body through organic material flux.

BioLogic’s second skin vents in response to body heat.To get the material to breathe, the developers have combined information on an old phenomenon. An observation of the ancient Bacillus subtilis natto shows contraction and expansion of the bacteria’s natto cells in relation to atmospheric moisture. Using that knowledge, the research team embedded the bacteria into fabric to create the ventilation process. They then harvested the animate natto cells and assembled them with micro-resolution bio-printing to create the “second skin” synthetic, which responds by opening and closing relative to body temperature.

The material is sensitive to slight changes in temperature, which could start the cooling process before the athlete is aware of the need to self-regulate.

The research teams are working with designers to take the project to market and report interest from designers and schools that are looking at using the material.