In the “century of biotechnology”, a new form of “bio-digital industry” is emerging in which, thanks to increasingly sophisticated and digitized technologies that allow engineering and production on a biological quantum scale, it is possible to analyze and reproduce the generative, chemical, physical, and molecular processes underlying natural mechanisms. Inheriting methodologies and technologies from biological fabrication, bio-digital practices foster a new material-based biological paradigm that, bringing biomimicry to a material level, allows designers to observe substances and logic used by nature for assembling and structuring its materials, developing more sustainable and strategic ways for artifice manufacturing, as well as replicating complex, tailored, and emergent biological qualities. The paper aims to describe the new hybrid manufacturing techniques, demonstrating how the transition from form-based to material-based approaches also leads to the change of logic and conceptual frameworks in design practices, allowing greater alignment with the paradigms of biological growth. In particular, the focus is on informed relations between physical, digital, and biological dimensions, allowing interaction, development, and mutual empowerment between entities and disciplines belonging to them. Such a correlative strategy can help design to apply systemic thinking, from the scale of the material to that of the product and the process, paving the way to sustainable scenarios, not simply to reduce the human impact on the ecosystem but to enhance nature through original cooperation and integration forms between humans, biology, and machines.
The following article aims to briefly describe the long and intricate search path which led to the design of Sinapsi, a smart device inspired by nature, for helping blind people’s mobility and orientation in track and field. The description will be accompanied by an analysis of different solutions already developed for helping blind people and by multiple thoughts, theoretical and methodological, that aim to critically explain the renewed role of design, as well as to highlight the importance of biological reference in a complex world populated by artificial intelligence. In particular, we will show how inspiration from biological systems can be one of the most innovative and attainable methods, not just to incorporate biological characteristics into machines and artifacts (nothing particularly new, even in AI) but to use it in the design process of smart systems as an instrument for improving quality of life and to expand our best human qualities. In fact, the growing complexity derived from the AI systems’ increasing degrees of autonomy has raised issues concerning the relationship between the user and the intelligent entity, as well as important ethical issues that call into question the design and that can be overcome through inspiration from the logic and the principles governing the intimate intelligence of nature. Finally, the explanation becomes particularly interesting and deep when we talk about assistive devices for sensory disabled people, in which the co-dependent relationship between the user and the technology becomes stronger and in which the boundary between help and substitution, between enhancement and helplessness, risks fading.
The paper joins the debate on the emerging material revolution that extends computational and biological principles to matter itself, becoming intrinsically sensitive, active, programmable. It aims to explain how the informed relations between digital, physical and biological worlds are today changing the design practice, as well as the sustainability paradigm. The new concept of “Bio-Augmented Materiality” is presented, which refers to future products no longer made of parts but as “material systems” in which material-product-performance are designed as a single entity through information, growth and adaptation to the context. Finally, this conceptual mutation paves the way to the next biomimicry in which multidisciplinary research strategies and the ability to code and decode life principles are helpful for sustainable scenarios, not simply aimed to reduce the human impact on the ecosystem, rather enhance nature through original forms of cooperation and integration between human, biology and artifice.
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