Symbiotic Futures: Ethical Biodesign Education in the context of the Anthropocene

From novel coronaviruses to mass species extinction, our existential crisis has forced a radical rethinking of what/how to teach design students increasingly conscious of their environmental legacy. Our collective response to climate stress will require not just innovative tools/technologies, but social and economic transformation – a shift in our thinking about the biophysical world and our role/responsibility in it. The following paper will present an ethical approach to teaching biodesign, underscoring symbiotic fusions as means of confronting environmental challenges within the context of the Anthropocene. Coined by science/technology scholar Donna Haraway in her book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016), the concept of “oddkin” is defined as the “unexpected collaborations and combinations” of seemingly unrelated things. Similar in concept to “symbiosis,” the biological phenomena in which members of different species live in physical contact, establishing long-term/permanent relationships and two-way dependencies with one another, oddkin is a method of survival in the Anthropocene - one that challenges the human exceptionalism that has gotten us into this mess. Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis argued that evolutionary novelties predominantly emerge from such symbiotic alliances. The following paper will explore how ethically-focused biodesign education can embrace such symbiotic unions while highlighting the opportunities it might afford, particularly as it relates to current/impending environmental challenges. The paper will outline a multidisciplinary approach to education/research involving both human and non-human intelligences, highlighting the work of a design lab that integrates biodesign practices, prototyping, futures methodologies, and digital fabrication to develop functional living prototypes.