Enhancing living/non-living relationships through designed materials

of living organisms as functional components in the final design piece. This disruptive approach seems to lead a paradigm shift from still linear and inefficient management of resources to a more regenerative one, inspired and powered by biological features and biofabrication techniques. With this approach, new opportunities also occur on a material level: if in the current economic model and design practice form precedes materialisation, in Biodesign materials gain a predominant role. Being made from or with self-replicating organisms, these materials play a role in morphogenesis: from the simple act of growing in a given shape to a more active function, when allowed, designing the final object. Biodesign embraces design and biology in a transdisciplinary approach, focusing more on the concept of "livingness". The role of inert materials in welcoming life forms is less explored, yet, at the dawn of life on this planet, the transition from inanimate matter to life was built just upon the strong relationship between the first organic matter with the oldest inorganic one. Looking at inert materials from the perspective of their relationship with living organisms, this study aims to highlight those material's features that can enable the blossoming of life on their surface. For Biodesign, both living and non-living materials can play an active role in the maintenance and propagation of life, often mediated by a surface of relationships. Colours, porosity and shape, among other features, can be designed to welcome living organisms such as lichen and mosses, insects or mussels; these inert/alive assemblages can remediate polluted environments, increase biodiversity in depleted zones, or boost biophilia in cities. Bioreceptivity is an excellent example of a material feature that can play an active role in this context, defined in 1993 by Guillitte as the "aptitude of a material to be colonised by one or several groups of a living organism". This material feature has recently been evaluated for its ability to improve the urban air quality since bioreceptive materials tend to be covered up by a biofilm in which lichens and cyanobacteria can act as biofilters. Materials' bioreceptivity can be designed based on chemical composition and physical properties, responding to the host needs and preferable environmental conditions, thus enhancing a multi-species environment and a design of mutual interest. From this study, three levels of material design for bioreceptivity interventions emerged: (i) design of the material composition, (ii) design of the physical characteristics of the surface and (iii) design of the shape of the material/artifact. A procedural thinking diagram to support design for bioreceptivity has been proposed. In Biodesign, an emerging trend is to keep organisms alive. Despite the difficulties linked to the uncertainty and mutability of living forms, authors start writing about living architectures and urban microbiota. Inert supports would probably be a necessary condition for these living structures and materials; therefore, this study aims to be a first state of the art of designed materials for more-than-human environments, highlighting the role that also non-living agents can play in supporting species that can repopulate impoverished environments, or became a key component in sustainable future productions and healty environments.