Sapiens Collective

The Sapiens Collective is a speculative robotics and engineering lab, comprising a variety of creatives and thinkers, featuring RCA students Abi Sheng (Fashion), Anne Ferial (Fashion), Catherine Mondoa (Textiles) and Filipe Magalhaes (Design Products) alongside engineer, Will Cogley.

As creators we endeavour to engage in interdisciplinary approaches to our respective practices, which is what led us to start the collective. We realised that we have a common interest in the possibilities of the human body and designing with a futuristic and speculative human centered approach.

Our centers of interest are the notion of re-hosting consciousness in the context of climate crises, potential pandemics, and exoplanet migration. Our goal is to redesign, improve and augment bodies.

The humanoid Eka is our first born. The name Eka means ‘Number One’ in Sanskrit. Eka is a speculative, mechanically chimeric humanoid that envisions fully efficient bodies that blend biomaterials and synthetic actuation.

Eka is created to feel, to love, to sense and to develop emotional intelligence - one day we hope it can be the vessel for the moving spirit and soul. Unlike most of the current humanoids created to serve mankind, Eka is being designed and augmented for the use of mankind, and to become human in the future.

We envision the next phase of the Sapiens Collective in 3 stages:

Stage 1: In the current landscape, we are offering design solutions and combining emerging technologies with existing social humanoids.

Stage 2: In the near future, Sapiens Collective will be offering bionics, smart wearables and artificial body parts which will be used as organ transplants - to merge humans with machines, for an evolving posthuman.

Stage 3: In the far future, humanoids made by Sapiens Collective will present the same properties as the human body with artificial senses - it will be a vessel for the spirit and soul. By then, we will be able to achieve consciousness transferal and immortality to some extent.

Welcome to the first steps of our journey.

To keep up to date with the progress of the Sapiens Collective, follow us on Instagram.