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.

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 towards 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.

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 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.

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.

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 programme 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.

This paper contributes a framework for articulating biomaterial affordances as situated, temporal and relational. These affordances are often difficult to articulate because they are not fixed properties of materials but shifting possibilities that become perceptible through making, handling, environmental exposure and time. Grounded in research-through-design and a retrospective synthesis of first-person material-led biodesign practice, the framework proposes six analytical dimensions – tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic and responsive – as relational lenses for attending to, articulating and designing with biomaterial affordances. Through examples from gelatin biofoam tangible interaction, dissolving wearables and comparative analysis of published biomaterial systems, the paper shows how biomaterial affordances may emerge through both immediate qualities such as softness, compressibility and tactile feedback and slower transformations such as swelling, dissolution, aging and environmental responsiveness. The framework supports biodesigners and researchers in making tacit material knowledge more legible and tracing how biomaterial affordances surface, overlap and chain together in ways that reshape subsequent design decisions, while foregrounding transformation as a design resource.

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. Utilising environmental DNA analysis, postgraduate Biodesign students characterised 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.

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 behavior for energy accumulation and release into a hygroscopic architectural module capable of rapid state change without the use of motors or sensors.

This paper presents the pedagogical frame of the Master’s Programme Design Ecologies, a design-driven higher education initiative that integrates ecoliteracy principles and relational approaches to material cultures, striving to create a design practice that is life-affirming. Responding to the ecological crises shaped by extractive, anthropocentric design paradigms, the programme cultivates an ecocentric orientation grounded in our interdependence with other-than-human beings, systems thinking and political awareness. Drawing on ecoliteracy principles, design is explored as a practice that shapes and is shaped by multispecies relations, material flows and planetary boundaries. This is examined through two student projects and the conceptual work guiding the programme. The paper argues that reorienting design education towards ecological relationality contributes critically to the field of Biodesign by proposing situated responses that acknowledge not only the biological aspects of design but also issues of power, cohabitation and the ethical responsibilities of intervening in complex ecological systems.

This demo showcases the use of human hair for interactive textile sensing. It explores how a familiar biological material can be integrated into soft electronic systems to support more sustainable resource use while enabling sensorially engaging interactions with textile interfaces. The work is based on the principle of triboelectricity. Human hair is highly tribopositive and, when in contact with a tribonegative material, acquires a positive charge, typically experienced as static electricity and commonly known as hair frizz. While this phenomenon has been studied in other domains, its potential remains under-explored within electronic textiles and biodesign. Building on this, this demo explores the use of human hair as a material for interactive textiles. As a renewable, biodegradable resource typically discarded as waste, hair offers a promising alternative to metals and toxic materials commonly used in traditional electronic textiles. In addition, it emphasises hair’s sensorial properties and its potential for interaction, drawing on shared understandings of what hair is and how it is engaged with. The demo features an interactive textile-based object in the form of a pillow, along with textile samples. Participants are invited to touch, press, and stroke it. Through this interaction, the audience can explore how different gestures and pressure patterns influence electricity generation. The demo aims to introduce new materials and design possibilities for interactive textiles. This biodesign approach bridges technical experimentation with the intimate dimension of working with a human-grown biomaterial, proposing hair-based electronic textiles as a pathway towards potentially more meaningful and sustainable soft interfaces.

We present Opto-chromogenesis, a projection-mapping framework for spatiotemporal design of growth, photosynthesis and pigmentation in bioprinted photosynthetic living materials. Extrusion-printed hydrogels containing the cyanobacterium Fremyella diplosiphon are illuminated with calibrated patterns of light that allow us to design and regulate macroscale biomass distribution and the Complementary Chromatic Acclimation of the cyanobacteria. The platform combines projector-based, spectrally tunable light delivery with 3Dscan guided geometric registration to impose defined photon irradiance on complex constructs. Experiments show that self-shading drives pigment shifts, lateral light intensity gradients produce differentiated growth, targeted UV laser exposure can suppress growth, and projection mapping provides a novel method for modulating growth and color change. By outlining projector selection criteria, analysis of lab-scale growth studies and non-invasive monitoring techniques that demonstrate parallel screening of illumination conditions, the paper establishes a basis for creating a photosynthetic architectural material that can adapt its color to changing lighting condition and capture CO2.

From unceded Australian Country and neighbouring regions, this paper investigates biodesign as a situated, multi-scalar practice, attentive to place, material ecologies and more-than-human relations, reporting from a different ‘patch’ to the dominant centre. Drawing on deep-time Indigenous knowledge systems and emerging biotechnological practices, it contributes a relational, place-responsive orientation for biodesign, extending its conceptual, ethical and methodological possibilities. Through auto-ethnographic reflection and case studies spanning Indigenous-led practices, biomaterials research and regenerative infrastructures, it reveals how biodesign is enacted differently when grounded in specific bioregional, cultural and material conditions. The practices discussed in the paper demonstrate a bioinclusive aesthetic – embracing growth, decay, contamination and microbial cohabitation as regenerative design forces for shaping multispecies futures. Reframing biodesign in this way, as a pluriversal and multi-scalar activity, this study puts forward a set of principles for multi-scalar biodesign that foreground locality, relationality and responsibility when designing with living systems.

Biodesign is increasingly recognised as a promising life-centred design field, yet its implementation within Industrial Design Engineering Technology remains limited. This study investigates the research question: “What systemic structures hinder advancement of biodesign?”. Drawing on extensive interviews with 21 pioneering biodesign experts (n = 21) and qualitatively analysed through a systems-oriented perspective, the findings reveal that barriers are not isolated practical issues but rooted in deeper systemic structures across several system depths – from competencies to agency, design briefs, tools and processes. Four constraining systemic structures were identified: limits to growth (accessibility), eroding goals (expectations of biodesign projects), growth and underinvestment (invest in biodesign competencies) and tragedy of the commons (knowledge restrictions in biodesign). Together, these indicate that biodesign’s limited advancement stems from systemic misalignment rather than technological immaturity. The study advocates coordinated systemic interventions at deeper system depths to enable cumulative, long-term advancement of the biodesign field.

Mycelium-based composites (MBC) proved to be the one of the first biofabricated materials that can be implemented directly in architectural and interior design settings. The study presents a novel method of MBC biofabrication, which functionalises filaments of MBC stabilised by textile-net tubes as weft, woven on the cotton string warp. Cotton strings are arranged spatially by hanging to allow for three-dimensional formations and physical gravity-based finding of the optimal form. The demonstrators are the subsequent upscaling attempt after initial small-scale (30–60 cm height) proof-of-concept prototypes (Biale et al., 2026), which proved feasible. The goal of the study was to understand better the interplay and interdependencies of the process’s parameters in all of the biofabrication phases (filament production, assembly, water transfer and skin formation during growth, contamination prevention, drying and shrinking) in the (case of bigger demonstrators 120 cm height) cultivated in semi-sterile conditions. The study has developed an understanding of which aspects become more significant as the element’s size increases and has verified the feasibility of this biofabrication method for future upscaling efforts.

This paper presents the MUSE – MyceliUm SEat framework as a research-through-design approach for applying mycelium-based materials in real-world contexts. Addressing the gap between experimental biomaterial research and functional deployment, the project establishes a cross-scale methodology that moves from extreme performance testing to interior spatial integration. Phase I situates mycelium composites within a high-performance racing environment to accelerate material optimisation under strict structural and ergonomic constraints. Insights from systematic material testing are consolidated into a material matrix adaptable to diverse functional requirements. Phase II translates this knowledge into furniture-scale applications, employing varied fabrication strategies and reciprocal material-form development, presented in “The ‘Living’ Room,” an installation that functions as a long-term public testbed, enabling evaluation of performance, perception and ageing under real use conditions. The framework demonstrates how extreme scenarios, interdisciplinary collaboration and spatial deployment can advance living materials beyond demonstrators toward scalable biodesign practice.

Large-scale solar parks are rapidly expanding as critical infrastructures for climate mitigation, yet they often remain ecologically underutilized landscapes. This pictorial presents MycoNest, a biodegradable, mycelium-based habitat system designed to support multi-species regeneration within solar parks. Rather than treating biodiversity enhancement as a permanent architectural intervention, MycoNest operates through designed temporality: seasonal habitation, material decay and ecological succession. Grown from agricultural biowaste resulting dried mycelium composites, the structures function as nesting sites and insect habitats while gradually returning nutrients to the soil and supporting native vegetation after use. Anchored in real-world deployment contexts, the project explores how renewable energy infrastructure can act as an ecological interface rather than an exclusionary system. Through material experimentation, lifecycle-based design and situated deployment scenarios, this work contributes a regenerative, more-than-human biodesign approach that foregrounds time, decay and ecological participation as central design parameters.

Biodesign is an emerging transdisciplinary field that engages non-biologists in working with living systems. This poses a range of challenges for biodesign education, as traditional teaching methods between life sciences and other disciplines remain poorly aligned. Particularly, education models for training mixed-background student cohorts remain underdeveloped. Drawing on an experimental design research workshop with an interdisciplinary group of students, four barriers to entry were identified: biological uncertainty, knowledge asymmetry, delegation dynamics and temporal mismatch. This paper reports on classroom observations and proposes the introduction of a translational teaching tool as a method for lowering the entry threshold to biodesign through scaffolded practical training. The tool aims to reinterpret scientific standard operating procedures as Biodesign Manuals – assembly-manual-style, visual instructional devices that translate tacit laboratory knowledge into transdisciplinary workflows.