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.

This pictorial investigates how biological processes can guide material fabrication, positioning microbial growth as a sustainable method for architectural construction. This approach frames bio-based craftsmanship as material making grounded in biological activity rather than industrial production. The research builds on ureolytic microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) applied to construction and demolition (C&D) waste, using the fungal strain Trichoderma reesei. The project, titled My-stone, documents a fabrication process that begins with the inoculation of C&D aggregates with living fungi and continues through weekly feeding with nutrients, calcium chloride, and urea. As the mycelium develops, it gradually binds aggregates into a stable composite with its biomass, cementing this process by inducing calcium carbonate precipitation. Through this staged formation, mineralised material emerges over time, which we term slow making as a way of producing locally sourced, site-specific, and context-dependent material as a craft-based technique for architectural and design practices.

This demo presents the Biomimetic Sampler: a constraint-based ideation exercise that introduces participants to foundational concepts of biodesign through two linked activities, observation and translation, conducted under time pressure. The exercise requires no prior background in design, life sciences, biomimicry, or fabrication, and has been deployed across six sessions at three institutions with audiences ranging from engineering undergraduates to experienced design educators to members of the public.

Participants begin by observing a biological specimen, a fossil, shell, seed pod, or other preserved organism, and producing written descriptions on cards that speculate on the organism’s behavior, relationships, and strategies based on form affordances rather than naming its parts or naming its appearance. These cards are then redistributed: each participant receives a stranger’s descriptions and constructs a wearable object through interpretation of those descriptions alone, without seeing the original specimen. The visual link between biological source and material output is deliberately severed forcing information through abstracted language.

This constraint does specific pedagogical work. By removing visual access to the source, the exercise forecloses surface mimicry of natural form and requires engagement with functional and ultimately relational biological logic. The speculative work of the description phase, inferring behavior and strategy from static form alone, introduces participants to modes of biological reasoning that precede and enable deeper biodesign thinking.

The wearable as a target object class compounds this: a wearable must negotiate the human body, its scale, its movement, and its social context, requiring that the biological translation arrive at a proposal for how a human might enact and inhabit the relational logic of another organism.

Time pressure and exhaustive iteration are integral to the methodology in its most effective forms. Participants produce multiple prototypes in rapid succession, a structure that exhausts the most literal responses and which generates surprise and adaptation.

The exercise was first developed for DESIGN 289: REDRESS Biomaterials and the Future of Fashion at Stanford University, which was awarded the Outstanding Instructor Award at the 2025 Biodesign Challenge. In nomination letters submitted by students, the exercise, which is the first of the class, was the most consistently cited element of the course. Ultimately, students who arrived to REDRESS with no prior experience in design, life sciences, or biodesign have gone on to secure competitive funding to continue the research first begun in the course. The kickoff exercise, The Biomimetic Sampler, has since been deployed at four additional non-curricular contexts, confirming that it functions independently of the course structure and scales across audience types and institutional settings.

Loma documents the scaling of mycelium biomaterials fromlaboratory cultivation to functional furniture through a case study in post-growth textile fabrication and public interaction. This pictorial presents a handwoven mycelium-cotton textile developed for exhibition-scale public use at Habitare Design Competition 2025. The work demonstrates a post-growth weaving strategy as a response to material constraints and biological irregularity. Through transparent documentation of successes and limitations, this project reveals current technical gaps: mycelium textiles at furniture scale require non-biomaterial backing and adhesive for structural stability, defining a boundary of current biomaterial practice. Exhibition data (43,000 visitors, sustained tactile engagement over 5 days) provides evidence of user acceptance. This visual documentation contributes transferable practitioner knowledge for designers integrating biomaterials into everyday objects.

Urchin Futures is a biodesign project that responds to climate change by connecting marine science, biomaterial experimentation, aquaculture, and food culture. Working with marine biologists, aquaculture practitioners, chefs, and ceramicists, we developed a transdisciplinary model that spans marine ecologies, biological knowledge, and seafood waste streams to prototype circular materials and public experiences. Integrating scientific research, biomaterial exploration, and cultural practice, we asked how marine organisms and seafood waste can inform material cultures and public conversations around climate-resilient coastal food systems. Together, we visualized urchin-integrated farming models and prototyped circular material cultures through EchinoDye, EchinoClay, EchinoGlaze, and a participatory dining experience. Our circular approach combines sustainable urchin farming, waste reuse, and gastronomic explorations of urchin roe, while building shared knowledge across research, industry, and community partners.

Microalgae-based engineered living materials (ELMs) are increasingly explored in biodesign, yet initiating experimental work remains technically complex and parameter-sensitive. This pictorial presents a structured, experimentally grounded roadmap for extrusion-based bioprinting of microalgae-laden hydrogels, framing fabrication not as a matter of achieving geometric fidelity, but as a process of designing conditions for living systems to persist and perform. Using alginate–Pluronic F-127 formulations as a reference system, we document key stages from microalgae preparation and hydrogel characterization through printing optimization and viability assessment. Systematic evaluation across formulation composition, extrusion pressure, and printing speed shows how biological integration shifts the printable window and why geometry-based metrics alone are insufficient – print outcomes emerge from negotiating intertwined material, process, and organism constraints. Post-printing analyses confirm sustained photosynthetic activity and cell viability within the printed constructs. Translating microalgae-based ELMs from concept to practice requires coordinated decisions spanning biology, hydrogel design, rheology, and printing parameters, while most studies report only optimized end points. The presented framework supports more reproducible and design-oriented development of microalgae-based ELMs within the biodesign community.

Living and bio-based materials such as mycelium composites are increasingly explored as sustainable alternatives, yet their integration into design practice remains limited. This paper presents a small-N methodological demonstration of a multisensory evaluation protocol for capturing intuitive first-encounter sensory, affective and perceived applicability responses to low-TRL biomaterials before association to a product context. In structured workshops, design students and professionals (N = 11) engaged with six mycelium-derived artefacts through free-choice profiling, modality-specific likeability ratings, spatial applicability ranking and visual profiling. The protocol examines how early sensory identity is constructed through descriptors, sensory differentiation and perceived design relevance, and how this first construction may open or limit imagined application possibilities. Heat map synthesis and PCA visualisation were used to generate preliminary material identity profiles. The paper contributes an exploratory methodological basis for studying how unfamiliar biomaterials are initially perceived and how sensory modalities shape early material differentiation in design contexts.

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.

Biodesign is often framed as an extension of industrial design through biological materials, processes, or aesthetics. This paper argues instead that biodesign represents a fundamental, epistemic, and civilizational shift, comparable in magnitude to the Industrial Revolution that shaped industrial design and its pedagogy. Drawing on Alexander Manus conception of the designer as a cognitive agent, the paper reframes design as the structuring of meaning and relationships rather than the production of objects. As artificial intelligence and biological intelligence increasingly converge, the designers role shifts from innovator to co-evolver: a mediator of adaptive systems operating across temporal and ecological scales. Situating biodesign within an emerging biotechnical revolution, the paper critiques industrial archetypes in design education and proposes a post-archetypal pedagogical framework grounded in systems thinking, more-than-human ethics, and planetary cognition. Biodesign thus emerges not as a style, but as the design paradigm of a biotechnical age.

Mycelium-based composites are part of an emerging group of biofabricated materials with potential for sustainable construction and interior applications. Their properties depend on fungal species, substrate composition, incubation conditions, and post-processing strategies, yet the relative influence and controllability of these parameters remain fragmented across the literature. This review systematically analyses 46 peer-reviewed studies to evaluate how externally controllable fabrication parameters affect mechanical, thermal, acoustic, and hygroscopic performance. The biofabrication workflow is structured into pre-processing, incubation, and post-processing stages, with particular emphasis on incubation as an underexplored design domain. While species and substrate strongly determine baseline performance, environmental and physical parameters applied during growth, such as moisture, temperature, aeration, and mechanical confinement, suggest potential opportunities for dynamic property tuning. By proposing incubation as an emerging opportunity for material programming, this review outlines pathways toward digitally controlled, functionally graded mycelium composites, contributing a structured framework for integrating biological growth into biodesign workflows.

As biodesigners increasingly engage with designing for nature, collaboration with field-based scientists becomes necessary. While collaborations in the laboratory have been widely examined, the formation phase of design–science collaboration remains mostly underexplored. Domains such as marine zoology produce knowledge primarily in situ, under environmental constraints that limit designers’ access to the research site and prevent the kind of embedded, informal knowledge-sharing that often grounds laboratory collaboration. As a case study, an exploratory diagnostic workshop with nine early-career marine zoologists examined these conditions. Structured activities surfaced cognitive capacities, work ecologies, role expectations and structural constraints shaping collaboration. Scientists showed strong integrative thinking but framed design mainly as technical service, while mutual stereotyping obscured shared capacities. The study provides empirical insight into rarely examined field-based research ecologies and suggests that a structured diagnostic workshop during team formation can reveal methodological and epistemic compatibility factors that informal conversations often leave implicit, positioning this phase as a critical site of interdisciplinary practice.

As architectural design paradigms shift from century-lasting, fossil-based construction materials toward regenerative, biogenic solutions with much shorter life cycles, a novel opportunity opens for design with material temporality and transformation. Taking a fully biobased yeast-cellulose-alginate-glycerol composite hydrogel as a case, this study examines how physical and visual properties change under air, soil, and water exposure by measuring mass loss, shrinkage, deformation, embrittlement, and color change in manually and robotically extruded constructs from this material. The results reveal distinct patterns of swelling, contraction, structural distortion, surface brittleness, and chromatic shifts that affect the designs across different exposure conditions. Together, these patterns establish a preliminary knowledge basis for architectural design that could accommodate these transitions, demonstrated in a speculative, conceptual architectural design proposal leveraging transformation and decay as part of the design. By situating material temporality as informative rather than detrimental, the study exemplifies how environmentally responsive biomaterials can support circular architectural biodesign.

Mycelium composites are intended to replace plastics in different applications as lightweight, sustainable alternatives. One major limitation is the exchange of oxygen and heat in the core of the material. Bio-welding allows the stacking of thinner layers that are then connected by fungal mycelium. We screened six different fungi for their growth rate, binding strength and gap-bridging capability before fabricating bio-welded composites from beech sawdust with two of the fungi, using two different particle sizes and growth durations. The influence of these parameters, as well as the number of layers and their orientation in the material, on internal bond strength and thermal conductivity was assessed. We found that the maximum gap-bridging distance of a fungus is less essential than the strength of the mycelium connection. Most importantly, the surface roughness of the layers must be minimized to ensure that the bio-welded interface is stronger than the individual layers.

This demonstration presents a biodesign toolset developed through three years of situated research in a BSL-1 biological laboratory. The project investigates how more-than-human sensibilities can be articulated within conventional lab environments typically structured around human-centred biological experimentation. Adopting a “Becoming cyanobacteria” stance informed by the philosophy of becoming, the author positions the laboratory as a shared field observed from a microbial scale, with particular attention to cyanobacteria’s phototactic behaviours and optical sensing. The toolset includes a redesigned biodesign lab notebook, a DIY phototaxis toolbox built with physical computing and 3D printing, mixed-reality systems using HoloLens 2, and a custom VR application, Cyano Vision, which visualises cyanobacteria’s sensorial relations to light from a non-human perspective. Rather than proposing a universal methodology, these tools function as situated artefacts that materialise one possible configuration of more-than-human biodesign practice. Through hands-on engagement and documented use cases, attendees are invited to reflect on how biodesign infrastructures, tools, and experimental protocols might be reoriented to better accommodate non-anthropocentric ways of knowing and designing within laboratory settings.

Biodesign is an emerging field that brings together a wide range of practices, connecting fundamental research, applied sciences and creative approaches. Within this spectrum, a tension exists between instrumental uses of biological processes and a growing sensibility that acknowledges the agency of living materials and organisms. This study proposes reconciliation as a guiding concept for biodesign, understood not as a metaphorical gesture but as a concrete and plural perspective that promotes species coexistence and conservation. We contextualise reconciliation through restoration, reciprocity and relationality as distinctive yet interconnected design and ecological principles that extend beyond normative human exchange, promoting multispecies coexistence. Through a mix of reflexive thematic synthesis and the analysis of selected case studies derived from the authors’ own projects, employed as a practice-based methodological inquiry and primary source of empirical and reflective insight, we explore how reconciliation is enacted and experienced in practice. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework to address reconciliation in biodesign, offering guiding concepts and key questions to discuss and support ecological flourishing in multispecies collaborations.

This demo presents a collection of physical tools and artefacts developed through an in-depth, organism-specific biodesign inquiry into Flavobacteria, microorganisms known for producing dynamic, iridescent colourations. It traces a trajectory from laboratory characterisation to interaction-centred prototypes and ultimately to Flaviri, a living artefact designed to support everyday human–microbe engagement. At its centre are three Flaviri artefacts and large inoculated Petri dishes that enable direct yet sterile swiping and tilting interactions, allowing attendees to experience first-hand encounters with Flavobacteria. The demo also showcases intermediate tools and artefacts – from early Petri dish explorations to custom habitats and prototypes for performing direct interaction – that demonstrate how interaction techniques were gradually refined for long-term, everyday contexts. Finally, two research tools are presented, highlighting how systematic documentation of temporal and iridescent expressions and explorations of long-term growth informed these design explorations. Taken together, these materials demonstrate how iridescent Flavobacteria can be integrated into living artefacts that extend biodesign practice into everyday contexts and open space for human–microbe engagement, while also offering inspiration for similar in-depth biodesign inquiries.

Climate instability and socio-ecological inequality demand design methodologies that integrate material, biological and cultural systems. While Regenerative, Participatory and biodesign have expanded the scope of design practice, they often lack approaches for integrating material development within culturally situated contexts. This paper introduces Material Re-Mixing, a novel biodesign methodology grounded in place- and culture-based material investigation, biological integration and participatory co-creation. The methodology is developed through a case study in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, focusing on bio-composite innovation for traditional wool felt gers. Combining textile testing, biomaterial experimentation, ethnographic research and stakeholder workshops, the case study demonstrates how mycelium-based composites can enhance performance while maintaining cultural continuity and how culturally grounded material investigation and innovation can catalyse systemic healing at the community level. Material Re-Mixing contributes a transferable system that foregrounds material agency, cultural knowledge and circular biological processes, offering a pathway towards more situated approaches to ‘wicked’ socio-ecological challenges (Rittel H and Webber M (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences (4), 155–169.).

Biofabrication practices in Biodesign commonly rely on preformed cultures, standardized strains, and established protocols, often without critically addressing their provenance and ecological implications. This tension is particularly evident in SCOBY cultivation, where microbial cultures are frequently exchanged as fragments with uncertain origin. Informed by the Regenerative Ecologies frameworks, that advocates for ecological literacy and situated engagement with living systems, this contribution addresses how SCOBY can be grown “from scratch”. The investigation draws on a doctoral study engaging with acetic fermentation practices in Thailand and Germany, including apprenticeships, foraging, and solo experimentation with vernacular techniques. These experiences demonstrated that SCOBY can emerge from situated ecologies, highlighting the adaptive and relational nature of this biological system. Building on these insights, this paper introduces an open-source method enabling practitioners to grow SCOBYs through engagement with situated plants and microbes. From these insights, Situated Growing Design is proposed as an emerging trajectory and practical approach for translating regenerative aspirations into growing material practices that foster closer engagements with bioregional configurations.

Current funeral materials prioritise preservation over ecological integration, perpetuating extractive practices that damage environments while reinforcing cultural death denial. Extending the emerging trajectory of regenerative death care, this paper proposes regenerative biomaterials using post-mortem resource recovery via alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation). Effluent burial vessels and bone-ash tree guards demonstrate life-centred design methodologies, positioning soil ecosystems and native vegetation as design stakeholders. The research reveals how biomaterials designed for ecological wellbeing create regenerative infrastructure addressing both human grief and landscape healing needs. Biodesign materials are designed to nurture soil microbiomes and support native plant establishment over 24-month decomposition cycles to challenge industrial death care’s resistance to natural cycles. This work contributes a methodological deepening of regenerative death care beyond harm reduction, establishing methodologies for designing with more-than-human agencies through speculative material experimentation. The project reimagines death not as waste requiring disposal, but as a resource that contributes to ecosystem regeneration.

Biodesign education increasingly incorporates living materials into studio teaching, yet biomineralisation processes such as microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) remain largely confined to laboratory contexts. Typically framed as a protocol requiring sterility, specialised equipment and microbiological expertise, MICP is rarely positioned as a design-operable material system. This paper argues that the gap lies not in feasibility, but in how biological complexity is structured for studio engagement. Drawing on workshops conducted at Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, the study adapts MICP to unsterile studio conditions and develops a Boundary Conditions Framework through analysis of student fabrication decisions and material outcomes. The framework identifies outer, permeability and material boundary conditions as spatial and material variables that regulate mineral formation. Rather than reproducing laboratory optimisation, students engaged microbial processes through mould design, interface permeability and aggregate configuration, demonstrating a transferable strategy for studio-based biodesign education.