Conference Agenda

4D printing functions not merely as a smart manufacturing technique but as an interactive material technology: materials respond to human or environmental stimuli and generate a direct feedback loop. This study proposes a taxonomy that links Stimuli, Smart Materials, and Transformation Effects, developed through a combined Hierarchical Classification and Ontology-Based Classification approach grounded in a systematic literature review and ontology mapping. By organising complex stimulus–material–effect relationships into a designer-accessible structure, the taxonomy supports non-technical designers in identifying feasible pathways from intended interactions to material outcomes. It also provides a structured data foundation for developing 4D printing design guidelines and toolkits, enabling more direct translation of 4D printing concepts into real projects. Positioned as an interface between human intent and material expression, the proposed framework highlights how 4D printing can enable new forms of interaction design and fluid, responsive artefacts across design domains.

This paper examines how designers can contribute to the sustainable transition by retaining intrinsic value in imperfect, discarded materials from manufacturing. With European manufacturing generating over 230 million tons of waste annually, potential lies in using such materials at their processing stage as substitutes for virgin materials into new products. Drawing on a Danish research project with 22 material discards, the study categorises and characterises the materials into offcuts, rejected materials, rejected objects, process waste, and excess materials, each varying in imperfection parameters, predictability, variability, and data availability. The analysis examines how designers retain intrinsic value embedded in prior processing when transferring it into new product designs. Function, form, and material composition are identified as key aspects of preserving material integrity for value retention. The study conceptualises the Reshape strategy as a design-led circular approach that leverages these factors to integrate pre-consumer discarded materials into new product development.

This paper explores materials in transition through Living Textiles, a platform that integrates genetically engineered whole-cell biosensors into textiles for on-body physiological and environmental sensing. The project investigates how textiles can act as computational and ecological systems, integrating living cells that sense their environment and communicate through material change. By combining biological sensing with textile craft, Living Textiles reframes smart materials as regenerative and cohabited rather than extractive and disposable. The research contributes to the field of transitional materials design by: (1) presenting new interaction possibilities with microbial cells; (2) developing methods for designing microenvironments that sustain life and sensing; and (3) creating textile architectures that integrate textile fluidics to support designed textile biomes. Instead of relying on electronics, these textile ecologies invite new ways of thinking about care, microbiome design, and material intelligence.

Transparent wood (TW), obtained by removing lignin from natural wood and infiltrating it with bio-resin or bioplastic, has attracted renewed scientific and industrial interest over the past fifteen years as an effective alternative to plastics and glass. The research explores how this perceptual hybrid can be meaningfully presented in professional design contexts to support future use of TW. A twofold action was carried out during a focus group involving 12 international project professionals. On one hand, a sensory–perceptual analysis was conducted to identify the distinctive characteristics of the material; on the other, future application scenarios were explored through creative techniques typical of the cognitive economy, such as analogies, cognitive mapping, and creative collages. The research, conducted within the framework of the Horizon Europe project AI-TranspWood, aims to provide insights that will help project partners enhance the perceived quality of TW samples, supporting its future adoption and market introduction.

Hybrid craft can help envision more sustainable futures, recognizing the human-nature-technology interdependence in ecological making practices. Beyond industrial and research applications, digital fabrication offers new aesthetic and formal possibilities to designers, artists, and practitioners, exploring new materialities and narratives to foster sustainable discourses through hybrid craft and reflective making. This paper explores how hybrid craft and digital fabrication can foster sustainable materialities and narratives to reflect on human-nature-technology relationships and advance sustainability discourses through Janus, a collaborative case study combining local natural elements with 3D printing and crafts. By showcasing a corn stalk alongside its 3D scanned and 3D printed counterpart, the artwork challenges existing human-centric biases and contemporary extractive systems, highlighting human impacts on nature, technological mediation, and sustainability narratives emerging from natural and technological materialities, e.g., different growing patterns, timescales, and perceptions. Similar artifacts foster collaboration and provoke discussions on sustainable practices, acknowledging post-anthropocentric perspectives toward sustainable futures.

Salvaged timber embodies a paradox of contemporary circularity: despite its capacity to store carbon and its long history of reuse, it remains marginal within modern construction. Its reuse is constrained by regulations that both shape and reflect the material’s value. This paper reframes this paradox through the lens of value fluctuation–how financial, carbon, and social values oscillate and misalign across timber’s successive lives, determining whether it circulates as resource, product, or waste. These sequential uses, known as cascade use, describe an approach to resource management that prioritizes biomass retention. Building on this framework, the paper proposes a value-centered cascade-use metric for salvaged timber as a speculative policy tool to visualize, modulate, and stabilize value, enabling longer and more successive cascades. Policy, thus understood as a design medium, can render the dynamic spatial and social consequences of material economies visible, diagnosing systemic frictions and prototyping regenerative, less harmful material futures.