Conference Agenda

Designers today are actively engaging with experimentation and innovation of bio-materials derived from living matter, foregrounding the interrelationship between biological processes, material design, and ecological responsibility. In this context, workspaces that provide conditions to design with living organisms become especially crucial to leverage their transitional material potentials. Grounded upon a 24-month research-through-design study, this paper discusses the ground-up infrastructuring work of establishing a biodesign workspace to support designing with living matter in a university setting. I highlight the emergent nature of such endeavour, including the continuous alignment, containment, and care and maintenance work necessary for growing a provisional intervention into a dedicated workspace. In so doing, this study contributes to the call for transitional materialities by foregrounding infrastructuring work of designers as a crucial component in expanding engagement with dynamic material agents.

In Made in Italy products, the material dimension represents a distinctive element, capable of expressing both the quality of the product and the heritage of craftsmanship embedded in the territory. In the upholstered furniture sector materials generate significant environmental and supply-chain impacts, making their selection a strategic leverage point for sustainability and circularity. This study investigates how a digital material library can support designers and SMEs in navigating this transition by integrating sustainable innovation with industrial feasibility. Grounded in the Advanced Design framework, the research adopts a four-step methodology to analyse the current supply system, identify circular alternatives, review existing material libraries, and develop a dedicated relational database. The resulting prototype organises materials into clusters that combine technical, sensory, circular, and production-related attributes. The digital material library aims to act both as a decision-support tool and as a knowledge infrastructure enabling systemic circular practices in the upholstered furniture sector.

Each material production entails an ecosystem of interrelations linking geopolitical, economic, technological, cultural, social and sanitary dimensions, sometimes on a global scale. As designers, we are rarely conscious of these realities, and limit our actions to material selection at the scale of the artefact in constrained industrial and cultural settings. However, at a time of ecological crisis, tracking, revealing and understanding these complex systems is becoming an imperative if we are to transition towards resilient futures rooted in socio-economic realities. This article will present a pedagogical approach developed with Design Research MA students, where investigation and speculation stem from a given material. The authors discuss the types of issues encountered, such as the study of "proprietary materials", "promising materials" and "information materials", as well as ways to extend and deploy this approach in other educational or research contexts.

Eco material libraries are emerging in design education as more than repositories of samples. We define them as pedagogical material infrastructures that combine samples, recipes, documentation, and situated curation to support hands-on experimentation and reflection. Drawing on two case studies at the University of California Davis and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we examine how these libraries are built, maintained, and engaged in practice through interviews with faculty curators and a preliminary student survey. Across both sites, the findings suggest that eco material libraries extend conventional material-library models by linking material selection to making, comparison, documentation, and student contribution. They function as dynamic infrastructures connecting material experimentation, teaching, and sustainability discourse, while making material temporality and ecological implications tangible in design education. Eco material libraries support material literacy and biodesign pedagogy through reflective, relational, and process-based engagement with transitional materials.

This paper examines biobased materials as agents of creative and systemic transformation within design practice. Drawing from a university course on circular building product design, several graduation theses, and two research projects -one focused on food waste valorisation and another on load-bearing mycelium composites- it investigates how engagement with biobased, regenerative materials reconfigures the designer’s role across the value chain, from sourcing to post-use reintegration. By situating material experimentation within ecological and socio-technical transitions, the paper argues that biobased materials enable a re-materialisation of design knowledge, where making becomes a mode of inquiry into interdependencies between nature, technology, and culture. These practices reposition material agency as a co-creative force, expanding the epistemic and ethical dimensions of design towards circularity, resilience, and care. Ultimately, the paper proposes that such engagements cultivate new forms of creative practice grounded in regeneration and relational materiality.

In response to escalating planetary challenges, circular bioeconomy frameworks are increasingly vital for sustainable resource management. Biomineralisation, a natural process in which organisms produce inorganic materials, has been extensively studied in engineering but remains underutilised in circular product design. This paper investigates systematic material experimentation with photosynthetic biomineralisation across diverse waste substrates for circular product design. Through a practice-based biodesign methodology integrating biological protocols with design experimentation, the study developed a material sample collection of eleven waste substrates biomineralised by cyanobacteria. The findings reveal that the type of waste substrate influences material formation, consolidation, and aesthetic qualities, informing distinct design potentials. By translating circular bioeconomy frameworks into design practices, this research expands the potential of photosynthetic biomineralisation approaches within biodesign. It demonstrates how design inquiry can mediate between scientific and creative practices to generate new material knowledge for circular futures.