The Rise Of Biological Design Puts Designers In A Unique Position.

For centuries, people have been designing, controlling and altering microbes, such as pasteurization and selective breeding.

Recent technological advances are increasing interest.

For example, digital design and manufacturing tools, such as 3D printers.

The progress of bioengineering has made synthetic biologists make leather by cultivating collagen from animal cells, and genetically alter bread yeast to obtain the fragrance of flowers.

Synthetic biology is a rapidly growing market and is expected to reach US $13 billion 400 million by 2019.

This area is often referred to as bioengineering or biological design, and is increasingly closely related to designers.

The outline of biological design is introduced below.

In short, biological design is the intersection between biology and Design: it is a collaborative activity of scientists, artists and designers, integrating organic processes and materials in creating products and even clothing.

This may mean, for example, a chair growing from fungus mycelia, such as mushrooms, which is an amazing durable furniture material.

Thanks to the progress of computation, human beings can design iteratively and more accurately for biological organisms.

Proponents of biological design believe that this is a way to build things and more sustainably.

The way in which organisms grow and reproduce with a small amount of energy, and can replace toxic materials.

There is no doubt that engineered life systems will enhance our quality of life through more environmentally friendly ways of building and industrial production.

But this also brings about ethical problems, because if we do not make the correct use of it, the ability to change organisms can have disastrous consequences.

Some people believe that bioengineering represents the next wave of industrial revolution, which means that industrial designers replace plastics, metals, wood and other materials into biological materials such as fungi or bacteria to produce products.

Others believe that biological design is a new design discipline. Synthetic biologists design and synthesize meat, spices, cosmetic ingredients and other products by adjusting and manipulating DNA sequences.

Using computer to write DNA code similar to computer code, scientists have the ability to design and iterate the process, which is similar to the process used by web designers.

In this sense, biologists have become a new type of designers who make use of very powerful substrates, namely, living beings.

New areas of biological design usually involve scientists and designers.

Synthetic biology will have a major impact on our future. From food to medicine to manufacturing, designers need to help communicate with the wider public.

In order to bring designers and scientists into this new field, a number of works have been carried out.

The Biofabricate conference has been held for 4 years, mainly attracting entrepreneurs and

To attend the meeting, there are also companies such as Nike and Microsoft, and bioengineering companies.

Genspace, a non-profit organization in New York, actively promotes citizens' access to biotechnology and collaborated with the Museum of modern art in 2016 for the first time to host the annual biological design challenge competition. The contestants jointly put forward a new invention in the form of art and design students paired with biology.

Paola Antonelli, the architect and design curator of the Museum of modern art, has long been trying to introduce and popularize biological design to the public.

In 2008, she planned the first museum exhibition on the theme of Biodesign.

The other main participants in the field are as follows.

Ginkgo Bioworks: an organic design foundry based in Boston.

The company gained more than $100 million in venture capital last year, and is making industrialization of biological design through large-scale production of genetically modified flavors, spices and cosmetic ingredients.

In 2014, the company was recognized by Robertet, a French perfume company, using the genetically modified Baker's yeast to make rose fragrance perfume.

The scale of the foundry has been more than doubled.

New Harvest: founded in 2004, it was one of the early pioneers of the campaign to cultivate meat.

It helps expand the scale of scientists and biological designers working in the field by creating an open source standardized material library for biological design, even though the company is best known for training hamburgers in Petri dishes.

Modern Meadow: the company uses synthetic biology tools to amplify collagen, and the most striking thing is to produce leather in the laboratory.

Although leather production is the main business objective of the company, it has a vision for the future, which is to provide the meat grown in the laboratory to the poor in the world with low economic and ecological costs.

The chief creative officer of Suzanne Lee:Modern Meadow is a leader in the field of biological design. After training, she is also a fashion designer.

She is best known for using bacteria such as Kombucha.

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She is the founder of the Biofabricate conference, advocating that designers and scientists should work together.

Terreform One: a construction company specializing in social ecological design.

It is a leader in the construction of self generated and sustainable living materials.

The main concerns of biological design are related to the direction of development in this field: at present, the genes of different organisms can be edited, and eventually the genome of human embryos will be edited. With the continuous progress in research and technological progress, there are also concerns that biological weapons may be used to cause harm.

The meat grown in the laboratory can bring about moral dilemmas, such as the ethical problems of vegetarians eating it.

For all these problems, the most important thing is to continue discussions. The scientific research community and companies will be guided by the principle of pparency, while bioethicists are trying to raise other potential problems.

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