Mattering More-than-human Care in Biodesign

Today, the challenges of climate change and environmental crises are widely acknowledged as urgent global concerns. Against this backdrop, and informed by the epistemological turns of posthumanism, design research seeks to challenge and expand conventional paradigms. For the shared goal of "living as well as possible" with other earthly beings, it is essential to understand the intricate and dynamic relations we share with the (living) entities we design and cohabit with. Grounded in posthumanist, feminist care, and new materialist theories, this dissertation investigates care in biodesign, focusing on cultivating care relations between humans and living organisms, particularly microbes. Through exploring materiality as a lens for designing more-than-human care, it offers theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions to the expanding discourse on care in designing with living systems.

This dissertation employs a programmatic Research-through-Design process. A multiplicity of methods such as theoretical analysis, auto-ethnography, imaginary artefacts, material-driven design and a longitudinal ethnographic study are deployed. Within the research program, I conducted two main design experiments, including the creation of cyanobacteria-based living artefacts and the characterization of their temporal patterns.....