This research presents a transdisciplinary exploration of jagua (Genipa americana) as a natural chromatic agent in biobased materials. Bridging design, materials science, and bioengineering, the study evaluates how jagua extract and powder influence color formation and perceptual variation under different light conditions. Large-format films were fabricated incorporating varying concentrations of liquid dye and particulate jagua. The resulting materials were analyzed for chromatic behavior under warm, neutral, and cool light spectra. Laser-cut morphological interventions further examined how structural modification mediates light transmission and viewer interaction. Results demonstrate that jagua generates dynamic chromatic responses rather than a fixed color system, revealing a condition of “color inconstancy” in which perception shifts according to environmental and morphological variables. This research contributes to emerging biobased color systems and proposes a methodological framework for integrating plant-derived knowledge into experimental material design.

Modern construction is a major driver of environmental harm and global carbon emissions. ExoGarden is an architectural prototype that reframes cultivation as infrastructure: a modular system for rapid, local growth of edible plants under strict resource constraints. Drawing on space-farming research and bioregenerative life-support principles, it explores closed-loopinspired cultivation in which nutrients and organic “waste” become inputs—supporting food production while reducing dependency on external supply chains. ExoGarden is designed for remote, resource-deprived, or climate-stressed contexts on Earth and in space, and proposes environmental remediation as an architectural function rather than an added feature. This pictorial communicates the project’s formal language, system logic, and exhibition-based prototyping through speculative scenarios, renders, and installation elements, outlining a life-promoting strategy where shelter, food, and ecology are co-designed. Originating as a master’s dissertation, ExoGarden received the Bio Art and Design Award in 2023 and was developed into an installation at MU Hybrid Art House.

Biomaterial design is often celebrated as a sustainable alternative to industrial material production, promising to replace extractive processes. Yet, this vision sits uneasily beside critiques that see it reproducing extractive logics through the instrumentalisation of living systems. Drawing on ethnographic research among UK-based biomaterial designers, this paper examines how relationships between biomaterial designers and organisms are lived, negotiated, and ethically charged in practice. It argues that care, far from resolving tensions of exploitation, functions as a mechanism through which hierarchies of value are stabilised, justified, and sometimes unsettled. Through practices of growing, attuning to, and killing organisms, biomaterial designers cultivate what Donna Haraway (2008) calls non-innocent care: an engagement that acknowledges complicity in harm while sustaining responsiveness to more‑than‑human worlds. Attending to these ambivalent, affective, and creative entanglements reveals how care in biodesign operates simultaneously as an ethical aspiration, a condition of production, and a site where ecological promise and capitalist value production intertwine unevenly.

This paper presents Ambassador Trees, a biodesign research project that explores how plant sensing, environmental monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be reconfigured to support new forms of human-nature communication. Rather than treating plants and ecosystems as passive objects of measurement or optimization, the project reframes trees as localized ecological representatives whose physiological and environmental signals can be translated into interpretable, dialogic forms. Drawing on recent advances in plant sensors, environmental sensing networks, and Artificial Intelligence, this paper synthesizes existing technical research through a non-human-centered and speculative design lens. The work grounds this framework in a series of exploratory physical prototypes, Treeborgs, that embody ideas of interspecies interaction, distributed sensing, and AI-mediated interpretation. Together, these contributions demonstrate how sensing and AI might function not as extractive instruments, but as interpretive media that foster attentiveness, empathy, and ecological responsibility, offering a pathway toward more relational technological engagements with the living world.

The Beyond Symbiosis series explores the integration of non-human biological organisms and Artificial Intelligence as performance-driven co-creators in a more-than-human design future. Unlike traditional human-centered views that often see nature as just a resource and technology as a passive tool, this project promotes collaboration among the human designer, genetic algorithms, and the biological agency of Ganoderma lucidum. This study asks: “How can AI-driven evolutionary solvers and proximity algorithms optimise internal aeration networks and surface typologies to enhance the performance of mycelium-based composite (MBC) acoustic panels”.

To answer this, we introduce a hybrid computational design and fabrication framework, designed to bridge digital optimization with living material constraints. Within the parametric environment of Rhino-Grasshopper, an evolutionary solver is developed based on genetic algorithms, to optimise the superficial pattern of the panels. The solver’s fitness parameters are informed by the open-source Pachiderm (Rhino plug-in) simulations and acoustic analysis of a default 6x4x3m space, resembling a reverberation room setup (Fig. 1). This evolutionary loop generates a series of design solutions (Fig. 2). The panels’ pattern acts as an acoustically tuned, AI-optimised surface designed to promote sound diffusion. Additionally, a proximity algorithm is developed to generate a 3D printable internal aeration scaffold (Fig. 3). The scaffold structure is optimised by the use of a similar evolutionary solver, to evenly spread within the panel. This hollow structure acts as a vascular network of localised oxygen flow, aiming to enhance the biological growth of G. lucidum, and the overall acoustic performance of the panel.

Crucially, the physical translation of this digital framework is articulated to be scalable, accessible and replicable within a standard Fab Lab setup, aiming to promote open innovation and circular economy. Initially, the macro-geometry of the MBC panel is digitally fabricated by a CNC milling machine on MDF. Then, the panel is vacuum formed on PET sheets of 0.7mm thickness. The internal aeration scaffold is fabricated using a desktop 3D printer of 30x30x30cm volume, and a biodegradable wood PLA filament. During the incubation phase, the inoculated mycelium substrate is patched into the modular system. The wood-PLA scaffold is placed layered in between the mycelium substrate, allowing the G. lucidum to grow all around and fully integrate it within the MBC panel. The overview is a highly textured ecological aesthetic, where digital precision merges with the mycelial growth. As a result, there are two prototyped panels, one of overall dimensions 15x15cm (Fig. 4), and another 40x40cm (Fig. 5). The first, small panel sample was used as an initial proof of concept, while the full-scale panel confirmed the scalability of the process in terms of volume.

While the acoustic performance of the resulting architectural morphologies is currently validated through acoustic simulations, this study showcases a highly reproducible bio-fabrication methodology. It prioritises functional, full-scale prototypes prepared for future validation via physical impedance tube testing, and reverberation room testing. This workflow proves that algorithmic intelligence and biological organisms can effectively co-author functional acoustic panels. Ultimately, the series gives a glimpse into a future where our built spaces are not just made but grown, promoting a sustainable built environment.

Microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) offers a low-energy, carbon-efficient alternative to traditional mineral material production, yet its integration into digital fabrication for architectural applications remains limited. This research presents a design-to-biofabrication workflow that combines computational geometry, robotic extrusion-based 3D printing, and MICP. The study introduces a methodology that uses porosity, surface-area-to-volume (SA/V) ratio, interlayer connectivity, and overhang capacity as coupled design parameters that balance biocementation requirements and fabrication constraints. Through iterative testing of Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) geometries, an “Optimized Unit” was developed and refined to improve printability and biomineralization efficiency. The workflow is validated through a 1 m2 architectural partition wall demonstrator that illustrates the potential for modular biomineralized architectural components. The results show that calibrated geometric control enables stable extrusion while enhancing mineral distribution, demonstrating a pathway toward architecturally scaled bio-fabricated mineral components.

This paper presents a biodesign pedagogical framework that integrates experiential learning, metagenomic sequencing, and speculative design through the study of London’s rainwater microbiome. While urban systems typically treat rainwater as an inert resource, this research frames it as a dynamic “living medium” hosting diverse microbial life. Utilizing environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis, postgraduate Biodesign students characterized bacterial, fungal, and microalgal taxa, identifying specific potentials for nutrition, biostimulation, and bioremediation. These microbial insights were subsequently applied to the development of regenerative food systems and urban ecological interventions. By positioning rainwater as an active ecological collaborator, the curriculum enabled students to navigate more-than-human agency, ecological uncertainty, and systems thinking through direct experimentation. This study demonstrates how the integration of genomic tools into design education expands ecological literacy and supports multispecies practices. We conclude by analysing the pedagogical process phases and student outcomes, highlighting how rainwater serves as a critical interface between climate futures, urban metabolism, and living design.

Indoor environmental performance is commonly addressed through energy-intensive mechanical systems with limited integration into architectural components. Algae-based systems show potential for carbon uptake and environmental mediation, yet most applications focus on façade-scale or exhibition prototypes, with limited validation in interiors. This research develops AlgaMatrix, a modular interior photobioreactor conceived as an architectural component. The system cultivates Chlorella vulgaris within ultrasonically welded thermoplastic membranes supported by 3D-printed frames. Continuous fluid circulation and embedded sensing enable monitoring of biological activity and localized CO2 variation. Computational fluid dynamics simulations informed internal channel geometry and circulation strategies to promote uniform flow and reduce sedimentation, linking digital design to fabrication constraints. A 14-day comparative experiment demonstrated sustained biomass growth in the circulating system, while a static control declined. Localized CO2 reductions occurred during peak photosynthesis. The study establishes a reproducible framework for integrating and monitoring biological processes within fabricated architectural systems, advancing adaptive indoor ecologies.

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is an emergent living-derived material that sits at the intersection of biotechnology, materials science, and biodesign. Produced through microbial synthesis at the air–liquid interfaces, BC exhibits unique properties—high purity, mechanical robustness, and programmable growth—that make it particularly attractive for growth-driven fabrication approaches. This demo presents a biodesign-oriented micromolding strategy, referred to as biolithography, that leverages the intrinsic growth pathway of bacterial cellulose to fabricate complex microstructured architectures in a single-step, low-energy process.

Biolithography exploits the ease of patterning and oxygen permeability of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) molds, placed atop a liquid culture medium. Those molds allow oxygen diffusion and act as physical barriers with predefined geometries, enabling bacteria to synthesize and self-assemble BC pellicles at the mold–medium interface, faithfully replicating microscale features without post-processing or subtractive manufacturing. Using this approach, we demonstrate the one-pot fabrication of BC-based microneedles—an emerging class of minimally invasive transdermal delivery systems—produced entirely through guided biological growth.

Multiple microneedle geometries were designed and evaluated, including pyramidal and conical structures of 1000 μm and 500 μm, highlighting the method’s geometric versatility and replicability. In addition to native BC microneedles, a biomineralized variant was created via a design-integrated mineralization strategy that combines a modified growth medium with post-synthesis mineralization baths. This process yielded needles with a uniform mineral layer, enhancing mechanical robustness and penetration potential.

The demo is structured as a multi-station exploration for biodesign by a dialogue with living materials rather than a purely top-down fabrication paradigm. Stations will guide attendees sequentially from a digital design display (TinkerCad parametric models) through 3D-printed master molds, PDMS replicas, live one-pot BC microneedle growth systems, and a comparative sample station featuring wet and dried microneedles (native, in situ biomineralized, and ex situ mineralized). Functional testing stations will allow participants to observe penetration into Parafilm M layers, rehydration kinetics, and model drug delivery (rhodamine B diffusion into agarose gel) in real time. Together, this work positions bacterial cellulose biolithography as a scalable, sustainable, and materially expressive platform for future biofabrication and biodesign applications.

In recent years, bio-receptivity has gained increasing attention within regenerative practices. In the built environment, bio-receptive façades function as living interfaces that sustain cryptogamic and microbial growth, thus reshaping ecological interactions in urban areas. Although bio-receptivity has been studied by scientists for decades, architects and designers now play a critical role in advancing its application. This study investigates key parameters influencing bio-receptivity, including surface patterning, substrate composition, fabrication methods, and spatial orientation. Parametric geometries were computationally developed to enhance hydrodynamic performance, while material variations were evaluated for their capacity to support moisture retention and biological attachment. The prototypes were produced through an integrated workflow that combined subtractive, additive and formative manufacturing processes, and subsequently inoculated with a selected cryptogamic–microbial culture to examine growth dynamics. The research culminated in a nine-month full-scale installation entitled SPIKA, exhibited at the Milan Triennale, serving as a public demonstrator of bio-digital fabrication and ecological integration.

Adaptive architectural envelopes play an increasing role in mediating environmental performance while reducing reliance on energy-intensive mechanical systems, motivating renewed interest in materially driven, climate-responsive façade technologies. Although hygroscopic climate-adaptive passive actuators present an energy-efficient alternative to conventional electromechanical actuators, their dependence on slow, continuous deformation inhibits rapid, threshold-driven kinetic responses to environmental stimuli. This pictorial presents a series of prototypal design explorations for a biomimetic façade system inspired by the explosive seed release mechanism of Impatiens glandulifera (Himalayan balsam), translating its dehiscent behaviour for energy accumulation and release into a hygroscopic architectural module capable of rapid state change without the use of motors or sensors.

This pictorial presents an accessible workshop format titled “Living Collage”, which explores “livingness” in biodesign with non-specialists. As a research through design approach, grounded in embodied making, 8 participants collaboratively create living artefacts and discuss their implications for the field of biodesign, by using enlarged Petri dishes with an agar base, local natural materials, and printed images. Through the use of atmosphere and multi-sensory cues, a regular classroom is transformed to carry the feeling of working with something living, and a speculative narrative, along with related verbal semantic stimuli, guides the making process. The workshop was documented through photography and observation, which display curiosity, dialogical making, and reflection. The collective discussion was audio-recorded, transcribed, and manually coded by clustering emergent terms into a vocabulary map. Among others, the findings bring up themes around locality, crafts, and relation, but also show tension in themes of discomfort, control, and questions around safety.

On-body biodesign involves designing with living organisms in direct relation to human bodies and their surrounding ecosystems. Operating within this intimate and dynamic space, the practice creates opportunities by developing novel biotechnologies, cultivating new sensibilities, strengthening ecological literacy, and enabling more attentive and reciprocal coexistence with other living organisms. Yet, given the emerging and cross-disciplinary nature of the field, existing work remains fragmented. How are designers currently biodesigning with, for, and through human bodies, and what design opportunities could emerge for future on-body biodesign? To address these questions, we present a review of 40 artefacts spanning design, art, HCI, and materials science, mapping the design space across three dimensions: the key biological phenomena that enable interactions, the unique experiences these interactions offer, and the ecological configurations through which human bodies, living organisms, and digital technologies interface with one another. With this work, we aim to introduce on-body biodesign as a design research program and offer a structured overview of its current landscape. We further outline potential design pathways, inviting designers to engage with on-body biodesign as a generative space for relational thinking and regenerative practice.

Living artefacts situated in real-world contexts hold potential to support regenerative ecologies, for instance by enabling multispecies interactions and promoting biodiversity. However, a gap between theory and practice remains in demonstrating this potential, partly due to absent methodological frameworks that enable biodesigners to systematically engage with ecosystems and the unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors they entail. In response, we present an approach that integrates field studies and laboratory experiments, demonstrated through studies across four seasons in which living artefacts were situated in urban garden contexts. By harnessing the habitabilities of bacterial cellulose, these artefacts were designed to attract, host and surface local biodiversity. Through photography and DNA analysis, the study reveals a rich diversity of multispecies interactions, varying across artefacts, gardens and seasons. Our findings highlight prospects for biodesigners to thoughtfully tune ecological habitabilities and interactions through living artefacts and offer guidance on navigating tensions between intentionality and openness.

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is increasingly explored in biodesign as a wearable material at the skin interface. Produced by acetic acid bacteria such as Komagataeibacter xylinus, BC has a hydrated nanofibrillar structure and conformability that support direct skin-contact applications. Yet its articulation as a skin-interface wearable remains unsettled. Similar terms carry different evidentiary weight across design research, textile engineering, and biomedicine. This study uses cross-disciplinary qualitative comparative case mapping across 20 cases, organised into two sets. Set A provides a comparative reference set of textile-situated biobased wearable materials; Set B examines BC at the skin interface in biodesign. The comparison is discursive: stabilised textile-comfort vocabulary shifts within emerging BC skin-interface articulation. The paper offers a three-pillar analytical scaffold of comfort, care, and skin wellness, with skin health treated as a boundary term. Supported by a working glossary, the analysis clarifies how BC moves across these claims without treating them as equivalent.

Using the Biodesign Challenge as a representative corpus of early-stage exploratory work in biodesign, this paper analyzes 843 student-led projects presented between 2016 and 2025 to identify correlations between waste engagement, technological strategies, and project outcomes. The study proposes a Map of Practices at the intersection of waste, biotechnology, and materials design, grouping projects according to their level of involvement with waste, living systems, and material production. Results reveal the relevance of waste as both a driver and a material input in waste-driven biodesign, identifying recurring strategic approaches to waste, innovative biological strategies that merge materials design with waste management, and critical tensions, such as the predominance of degradable waste streams over more recalcitrant forms. Based on these findings, a decision-making tool is proposed to support problem definition, technology integration, and outcome positioning in waste-driven biodesign practices. In response to the growing urgency of waste as a pervasive socio-ecological challenge, this research addresses conceptual and methodological gaps concerning the integration of waste into biodesign and contributes analytical and practical tools for supporting more circular and regenerative material futures.

This paper investigates the feasibility of using mycelium colonization to upcycle household waste, specifically cat litter and spent coffee grounds, into large-scale screening elements through 3D printing and toolpath-informed design. The study introduces a composite that repurposes cat litter, a household waste that is typically sent directly to landfill, as a substrate for fungal growth within additively manufactured forms. By eliminating casting molds and employing continuous fractal toolpaths, the fabrication approach reduces secondary material waste while enabling space-filling, intricate geometries with parametrically controlled spacing that supports mycelium growth. This process extends existing biofabrication precedents through increasing geometric complexity. The research develops a repeatable workflow integrating material circularity, mycelium colonization, 3D printing, and computational fractal design to support scalable biofabrication. Prototypes were produced and evaluated at three incremental scales: 9 cm, 15.24 cm, and 22.86 cm. This work contributes to the biodesign community by demonstrating a resource-efficient method for transforming cat litter into biodegradable screening panels within a circular material system.

Chitosan, derived from chitin-rich biological waste streams, offers a compelling basis for bio-based textile materials but remains underexplored as a primary fibre. This paper presents a material-driven investigation into the wet-spinning of chitosan filaments and their translation into textile and design contexts. A modular wet-spinning system was developed to bridge laboratory-scale polymer processing and textile-scale experimentation. Process parameters were tuned to achieve continuous filament formation, and mechanical characterisation indicates properties suitable for weaving and knitting under adapted conditions. Embedded within a biodesign framework, the study positions mechanical limitations not as deficits but as active parameters shaping textile construction and formfinding. By translating fibre-level material behaviour into woven structures and speculative prototypes, the work demonstrates how wet-spun chitosan can operate as a design material at the interface of chemistry, engineering and fashion, contributing to emerging practices in bio-based and regenerative textile design.

Biodesign education increasingly engages with living and bio-based materials whose temporal, relational, and ecological properties challenge established modes of material archiving and teaching. Conventional material libraries, oriented toward stabilisation and preservation, are poorly equipped to address growth, contamination, and decay as constitutive material processes. This paper proposes a reconceptualisation of material libraries as living material archives: dynamic epistemic infrastructures that foreground transformation, care, and finitude rather than control. Drawing on feminist technoscience and material culture studies, the paper develops three conceptual lenses – cross-contamination, sympoiesis, and the website as garden – to examine how material and digital archives can support situated knowledge production in biodesign education. These perspectives are grounded in a detailed case study of the Living Library, a hybrid analogue–digital teaching project developed at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. The paper demonstrates how temporary, process-oriented archives can operationalise ecological responsibility, disciplinary openness, and regenerative learning practices.

This work investigates how ecological literacy and nature connectedness can be fostered in children aged 8–12 through engagement with a toolkit for place-based nature education. Children growing up in urban environments often lack access to nature, leading to lower ecological literacy and feeling less connected to the natural world. To help children reconnect with nature, we propose situating nature education in local environments, facilitated by a toolkit developed through a research-through-design approach that combines methods and perspectives from material-driven, participatory, and more-than-human design. Material explorations and a workshop with primary school children informed the conceptualisation of the toolkit, which invites children to shape mycelium-receptive artefacts, place them in local environments, and observe their transformation over time. Using clay as a substitute material, the shaping and placing activities were tested with 71 primary school children across four classes, alongside imaginative and reflective activities to encourage empathy and sensitivity toward fungi. Findings suggest that the shaping, placing, and reflecting activities can support ecological literacy and caring relationships with non-human organisms, indicating the potential of place-based, more-than-human learning tools to enrich nature education and reconnect children with nature.