Designer

Pioneering Designer and Sustainability Innovator

Crafting concepts at the Intersection of Nature, Technology, and Design, Dr. Sterry’s Work Defines a New Era of Sustainable Innovation and Creativity.

Dr. Melissa Sterry is an internationally recognised designer, design scientist, and strategist with over 25 years of experience at the forefront of sustainable design and innovation. From launching her first design business after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in design practice to spearheading award-winning projects that challenge traditional design paradigms, Melissa has been a visionary force across biodesign, architecture, urban design, digital media, fashion, and textiles. Her work is distinguished by a deep commitment to ecological design, circular economy principles, and the alignment of human-made systems with the natural world.

Early Career in Fashion and Textiles

Her design career started early: she undertook her first freelance design job while still in secondary school, thereon studied art and design history, theory, and practice for several years - from A Levels to art & design foundation to bachelor’s degree, training in fields as diverse as fine art, sculpture, illustration, photography, graphics, digital, textiles, fashion, product, and spatial design.

Initially specialising in fashion and textiles design, she then undertook several further courses in fields including tailoring and couture at the Liberty Sewing School in London, among other institutions. Further training was gained completing work placements with leading international designers, retailers, and manufacturers, working on samples for collections for designers including Karl Lagerfeld and Hussain Chalayan, and collaborating with with a knitwear designer to create a concept collection for Marks and Spencer.

Sterry went on to launch her own label in the mid-1990s, while also undertaking freelance jobs ranging from private client work creating bespoke evening wear to designing ready-to-wear collections for commercial clients. Keen to learn more about the commercial side of fashion, and building on earlier studies on international markets, merchandising, branding, and trends reports, she then went in to buying, including working in womenswear for a major British retailer. During her early years in the fashion industry she showed both her final college collection, and two further collections in London, attended many leading international trade and fashion shows including the VH-1 fashion awards in New York, and gained hands-on experience of working across myriad aspects of the industry - taking concepts from paper to store, and every step in between.

Dr. Sterry championed sustainability long before it was a mainstream concern. In the early 90s, she designed a groundbreaking apparel collection that anticipated the principles of cradle-to-cradle fashion—garments designed to biodegrade and be safely reabsorbed by the environment at the end of the season, a concept which, at the time was unprecedented. Her visionary work was inspired by her study of biomaterials and environmental issues, which would go on to inform her bio-inspired design ethos. In the years that followed, Melissa championed sustainable fashion, both authoring several articles, including cover stories for national magazines, and mentoring talents entering the field.

Transition to Digital and New Media

Starting in the early 1990s with computer-aided textile and surface pattern design, she had been an early adopter of digital media as a tool for innovation. In that period, she learned about the potential of the Internet to transform business and society through both a series of part-time jobs working in and with early pioneers. By her late twenties, Dr. Sterry had transitioned from fashion to the digital sector, working as a consultant and executive-level head-hunter in new media, before leading business development for a full-service design agency.

By 30, she had already co-directed two first-to-market digital startups, which had both laid the foundations for what would go onto become major markets within the B2B and B2C sectors. Though her career was largely focused on strategy, business development, and communications during this period, she led design and production across a series of high-profile projects, and in the process extended her design skills beyond traditional applications, influencing event design, art direction, publishing, and hybrid creative projects. From fashion shows and album launches to experimental collaborations with visual and audio designers, Dr. Sterry’s work pushed the boundaries of what design could achieve. In this period, she produced shows and events in London and New York for iconic British designers and brands including Louis Mariette, Mark Powell, Coco de Mer, and Alice Temperley, among others. Together with her creativity, her trademark became making the impossible happen through strategic alliances, creative collaborations, and highly innovative approaches to getting things done.

Sustainability Leadership and Transdisciplinary Design

In 2003, she founded Societás, which was one of the earliest sustainability consultancies, which integrating a collaborative laboratory, and think tank, brought together experts from across disciplines to tackle environmental and social challenges. A multi-award-winning company, it was one of a folio of design, arts, and innovation-led ventures that she cofounded in the period. Her other activities included cofounding the world’s first online arts awards - the Creative Graduate Prize; cofounding the world’s first online fashion arts awards - the Iconique Societás Awards, through which she both helped launch the careers of emerging talent and raise visibility of the need to embrace sustainability; cofounding a fairtrade music project with the late British music producer Steve Brown; and holding non-executive and advisory roles across several pioneering sustainability projects in design, fashion, arts, and publishing. Her works were recognised through multiple awards and honours and covered in national and international press.

Scaling Circularity from Fashion to Architecture to Urban Design

By the late 00s Dr. Sterry had turned her attention to sustainability in the built environment. In 2008 she cofounded New Frontiers, an initiative designed to help raise awareness and understanding of sustainable design and innovation in the built environment sector. As a new decade dawned, she embarked on a PhD researching and developing a new paradigm in building wildland-urban-interface resilience to wildfires through the creation of complex adaptive architectural and urban systems that mimic, synthesise, and synchronise with the biochemistry, behaviours, and relationships of plants that have evolved to live with wildfire. Initiated at the School of the Built Environment [SOBE], University of Salford, it was completed at the Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research group at University of Greenwich. Having published her thesis in 2018, Melissa has continued to research and develop the paradigm and its applications, and presented her findings and concepts in print, in talks, and in media in UK, Europe, United States, Canada, India, and beyond.

Simultaneously to starting her research, she launched Bionic City®, which was the first project to explore the question of “how would nature design a city?” As a leader in biofuturism and bioinnovation, Bionic City® has collaborated with experts in science, architecture, design, and engineering worldwide. With collaborators spanning the UK, Europe, the United States, Asia, and beyond, since 2010 it has been at the forefront of biologically inspired urban design and sustainable development.

An Experiment in Artificial Intelligence Power Bespoke Production

Dr. Sterry recently launched Biotique®, a British-made luxury brand featuring soft furnishings, dining ware, stationery, and fashion accessories. These collections, including Gothica, Gothica Noir, and Natura, feature her signature surface pattern designs, which are inspired by nature and created using eco-conscious processes that minimise material and ink waste. The designs integrate microscopic and other scientific imagery from her design research, resulting in visually and conceptually rich pieces. Each piece is made on-demand, further reducing waste, and with the aid of artificial intelligence, can be made bespoke to the customer’s needs. Over time, Melissa will introduce seasonal and limited-edition collections, continuing her exploration of bio-inspired aesthetics.

Thought Leader and Industry Expert

In early 2024, Melissa was selected to serve on the Design Council’s expert network, representing a full spectrum of design fields and sharing best practices across the sector. As a design leader, she has judged national and international design awards and held numerous academic roles, including guest lecturer, guest professor, external examiner, and thesis supervisor, among others, at prestigious design and architecture schools across the UK and Europe. She has also mentored and advised students and professionals, from undergraduates to executives, on design and innovation.

Design Philosophy

Melissa’s design philosophy is rooted in systems thinking and ecological alignment. For her, design is a tool for problem-solving, whether it involves creating products, services, or entire systems. Her work constantly explores themes such as circularity in material production, bio-inspired processes, and the integration of human-made systems with natural ecosystems. Her research and practice blend design, science, and emerging technologies to create solutions that are both innovative and ecologically aligned. Across fashion, architecture, urban design, and more, her design portfolio reflects a commitment to creating sustainable, future-proof solutions.

This unique approach has been realised in her own projects, as well as contributions to the work of others. Her independence as a designer and researcher has allowed her unparalleled creative freedom to explore the new frontiers in the field. Melissa’s contribution to creativity, innovation, and enterprise has been honoured with numerous awards, including the International Inspiration Women Awards, Woman Icon of the Year award 2024.

Specialisms

Primary fields of expertise are planetary and biofutures including biodesign, bioscience, bioengineering, biotechnology, and biourbansim; emerging material, information, and production systems and their applications in science, commerce, industry, and wider society; ecological design and urban and peri-urban resilience to hazards including wildfires, floods, storm systems and other natural, human, and hybrid events; transdisciplinary, complexity and systems theory and practice; circular design and economy, and regenerative design; sustainable innovation and enterprise in fields including design, technology, manufacturing, utilities, and the built environment; and environmental social governance, and business ethics.

Design Skills

• Speculative design and design fiction

• Design trends forecasting, and reporting

• Design concept creation, research, and development

• Directing and mentoring design projects and publications

• Reviewing and critiquing design ideas and initiatives

• Intellectual property and design research and funding

• Design talent acquisition and team development

• Design entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship

• Directing design awards and campaigns

Folio

Find select items from Melissa’s design folio, including original concepts, sketches, illustrations, montages, photography, and other visualisation works below. The selection conveys some of the constant themes her work explores, including circularity in materiality and production, design informed and enabled by the processes of the natural world, novel patterns and forms, and experimental and hybrid design and other creative processes, both traditional and emerging.

Read Melissa’s wider biography here and her CV here.