Designing living artefacts: Opportunities and challenges for biodesign

Abstract

Biodesign is an emerging form of design practice integrating biological materials and processes, and there is a growing interest in the field for structured conversations to generate insights on how it can be best taught, researched, and disseminated. In our conversations, we began exploring biodesign under the framework of Living Artefacts, in which livingness is prolonged to the use time of artefacts, and understood as a biological, ecological, and experiential phenomenon. Two researchers investigating Living Artefacts, through their short show-and-tell presentations, initiated threads of moderated open discussions. Using the Living Artefacts framework as a departure point, we collectively explored opportunities and challenges in biodesign, and possible ways in which they could be addressed.