From Subversive Labs to Biodesign Literate Curricula: Rethinking Biodesign Education

Biodesign has gained prominence over the past two decades yet remains conceptually hazy and institutionally unsettled, positioned between biology, material science, and design, with no shared vocabulary, clear entry routes, or agreement on who a biodesigner is. As biodesign enters universities, there is a risk that standardisation may erase the experimental, subversive cultures through which the field emerged. This paper combines a focused literature review with an online survey of self-identified biodesigners and autoethnographic accounts of teaching in improvised studios, kitchens-as-labs, and hybrid digital-fabrication spaces. The analysis profiles biodesigners as highly educated yet largely self-taught practitioners who rely on tinkering, informal infrastructures, and collaborations rather than standard bioscience curricula, revealing tensions between institutional demands for safety, learning outcomes, employability, and students’ experiences of open-ended, engagement with living systems. The paper proposes biodesign literacy as a framework that supports standardisation while recognising risk and uncertainty as legitimate sites of biological learning.