Shaping living artefacts: A complex phenomenon in the design process

This paper explores the concept of living artefacts, which integrate biological systems into design, offering materials with life-like properties such as growth, regeneration, and environmental adaptation. By blending biological processes with traditional design tools, living artefacts transcend conventional materiality, creating evolving products that interact with users and the environment. The study investigates methods and tools for designing these artefacts, examining biofabrication, digital manufacturing, synthetic biology, and DIY bio-techniques. It categorizes outputs of living artefacts into natural, engineered, and programmable matter, many still in the experimental or speculative phase. Interviews with professionals in biodesign, synthetic biology, and related fields, confirm the need for an interdisciplinary approach in creating living artefacts. The paper concludes by discussing the iterative, co-evolutionary nature of the design process for living artefacts and addressing challenges such as scalability, sustainability, and ethical considerations.