“Today’s lecture is about the problem of design” Richard Dawkins primes the young audience at the The Royal Institution during a 1991 Christmas event. He proceeds to explain how simple objects like stones and clouds are produced by accident through laws of physics on their own, while designed objects like a microscope or a watch couldn’t have come about by luck. Design has a purpose, as well as a cost, a benefit, and efficiency that can be measured.
Where, then, do living objects lie within that spectrum?
A pitcher plant that fills itself with water to drown its prey and holds a symbiotic relationship with maggots that chew up preys in exchange for oxygen; a snake that rearranges the bones in its skull to swallow an unbelievably larger prey than the original size of its mouth; a spiny leaf insect that every non-biologist would confuse with dead leafs.
Dawkins thus coins the term designoid objects, for things that are too complex to be compared with a rock or a crystal, but that come about through evolutionary hindsight instead of conscious foresight. This process, he argues, gives way to inefficiencies like the distorted face of the Picasso fish. Given the same constraints, a human designer might have rather opted for a proportionally spaced body like that of the skate.
In 1991, everyone could call it a day and say that evolution builds upon simple objects to create ever-more-complex designoid objects, that can eventually become creators themselves. To you, present reader, I’ll say: today’s piece is about the problem of biodesign.
In search of biodesign
Creations like space suits embedded with bacteria, myoglobin-rich tomato, and 3D-printed algae vessels, seemed all too far away from the familiar world of medical biotechnology when I first got introduced to them. “Biodesign” is what some of them were labeled as. Not bioengineering, not biotechnology, not biomimcry. Biodesign.
The clear line between software design and engineering, or frontend and backend, doesn’t seem to be present in bioengineering and biodesign. The popular rhetoric in most websites or articles about biodesign is “design principles applied to biology”. Meanwhile, some have proposed biodesign to be whatever its practitioners believe it to be (not clear enough).
As I skimmed through the pages of Biodesign books and websites, it was easy to notice that most creations — including mycelium-based bricks, algae-derived textiles, or air filters made out of spider webs — were repurposed materials produced through biological means. Though they might have come about through design considerations and constraints like circularity, affordances, or even feedback, these objects were only building blocks within a larger design effort, like a building or clothes. They are not a final product.
Biomimicry, on the other hand, is defined as “a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies used by living organisms to solve challenges”. Arguably, this is a framework within the whole design discipline, that takes inspiration from nature’s forms and functions to create new objects that are not necessarily made out of natural materials. Neri Oxman’s Aguahoja and Spider Silk Pavilion exemplify the application of natural functions like carbon capture and material synthesis that respond to physical patterns. Not only are the final products organic, but they have a form designed by humans, and a function oriented or inspired by the natural world.
Both of these subsets of biodesign are undoubtedly a weird blend between simple, designed, and parts of designoid objects. Ironically, they still seem somewhat dead to me. Whenever the organism is used, it’s not meant to interact with the final consumer, it’s just a part of a larger process, a brick of a house instead of the house itself.
A stranger kind of biodesign is GMOs. We design whole organisms that serve us, by making plant-based protein, textile and food dyes, spider silk, cotton, or cellulose-based leather. Those examples, however, still see the organism as a factory, a means to an end. I am more interested in organisms that are living, interactive products themselves: the cell therapy that beats cancer, the brain cells that play pong, the probiotic that prevents hangovers, the petunia that glows in the dark.
The last example, in particular, once again begins to blur the line between the functional and the aesthetic, between science and art. While evolution sculpted parts like flowers and functions like camouflage into designoid objects with the objective of survival and reproduction, biodesigners see the organism as a white canvas on which they can express themselves, solve modern problems, tell a story, connect with other organisms through shared feelings.
Let’s look into some examples.
A flower designer
Unless you’re a plant biologist, chances are you haven’t even heard of Arabidopsis Thaliana, the fast-growing weed with little white flowers. However, a lot of the genetic recipes for flower color, shape, and texture are now known thanks to the scientists who have studied it for decades. If any of this rings a bell, you may have recently come across Nick Desnoyer’s tweet on how he turned A. Thaliana into a fuchsia diva using CRISPR — “How come???” You ask.
Meristems are plants’ totipotent cells located at key points of growth. When external stimuli like light or temperature trigger mitotic cell division in the shoot apical meristem, it differentiates into a floral meristem. After this, there’s no cell division or stem elongation, and flowers begin to grow through the elegant ABC genetic mechanism of flower development.
Outwards to inwards, a flower has 4 main parts: sepal/calyx, petal/corolla, stamen/androcium, carpel/gynocium. A class genes, AP1 and AP2, promote the development of sepals and petals; B class genes, AP3 and PI, promote the development of sepals and petals; and C class gene, AGAMOUS, promotes the development of carpels and stamens — Can you believe that only five genes determine what gets grown in a flower?!
The craziest part is that this works almost like logic gates: if A genes are mutated, C genes are expressed in their place, growing no sepals or petals, only carpels and stamens; if B genes are mutated, only sepals and carpels grow; if C genes are mutated, only sepals and petals grow… since AGAMOUS is also responsible for termination of the floral meristem at whorl 4, mutant flowers produce extra whorls that lead to the rose-like phenotype in Nick’s flowers.
As for the color, Nick used the reporter system RUBY, which consists of three genes (CYP76AD1, DODA, and glucosyl, fused by self-cleaving 2A peptides) that convert the amino acid tyrosine into the bright red pigment betalain. He put RUBY under the control of the pOp6-LhGR system, so that he could activate (and control the intensity of!!) the red coloring using the hormone dexamethasone. Similar to the better-known LacI operon, pOp6 functions as RUBY’s promoter and it’s activated by LhGR only when the hormone is present.
If relatively simple genetic tweaks led to a leapfrog in aesthetics, can you imagine what other plants we might design and grow as our understanding of plant morphology and development does? I’m personally excited about creating more interactive plants that react to touch like the Mimosa pudica, or more plants like Codariocalyx motorius, whose leaflets move at speeds rapid enough to be perceivable with the naked eye.
Further, I imagine how we might build a digital biodesign UI in which people design their own flowers by pressing buttons, moving sliders, drawing what they imagine, or even by simply prompting the system through natural language. The more plants we characterize, the broader design capabilities will be. We are ultimately headed towards a mind-atoms interface that I hope to see in my lifetime.
Taste and distribution are all you need
Biology’s countless and jaw-dropping possibilities indeed invite wild dreamers into a new era of biodesign. When it comes to building a consumer business around such products, I think a lot about MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable), the principle used by Raymond Loewy (the father of industrial design) to design logos and products that were still recognizable to consumers while appearing more modern and efficient.
There is such a thing as death by excess of innovation. Companies that deeply understand 1) their customers’ current needs and innovation elasticity, 2) the cultural zeitgeist of the moment, and 3) their own technical capabilities, design the evolution (what an oxymoron, I know!!) of their products across time to always launch at the sweet spot.
As of today, the three “consumer plants” startups I follow are: LightBio (glowing petunias), NeoPlants (air-purifying pothos), and Senseory (aromatic plants). All of them have designed plants with functions they wouldn’t normally have, they are using some kind of genetic engineering to bring their products to life, and they need to sell them to remain alive themselves.
Though they’re all the Biopunker’s dream, some are making strides across media channels, and I don’t even know their sales numbers, my take is they were too innovative for the 2024 consumer. The main reasons Americans bought house plants during the 2020 pandemic year was aesthetics and a desire to reduce stress. You want to pay attention to what interior design influencers and outlets are modeling, and what makes sense to bring into your home.
Leaf Envy, a UK house plants brand, took note and action. While consumers would’ve normally preferred to shop their plants based on a physical interaction, during the pandemic Leaf Envy built a subscription and delivery business for both final consumers and businesses. Through robust social media advertising and a website that allows customers to filter plant varieties based on their expertise level, light conditions, size, and benefits (like air purification or pet friendliness), they brought their plants to places like Soho Home, Grind, and Google.
Meanwhile, non-GMO variegated varieties of monsteras have been sold for $30,000 USD each at the International Exotic Plants Expo in Bangkok. More than any other feature, color is the current low-hanging fruit for designer plants. Variegation has been genetically painted into other plants like the pothos, anthuriums, and my personal favorite, the Philodendron Pink Princess.
From a biological point of view, variegation is a fascinating result of mechanisms like mutations to genes involved in chlorophyll synthesis, microscopical structures that interfere with visible light, or anthocyanins that are red pigments. Since these variations don’t tend to get passed on to seeds, tissue culture and grafting techniques are used to reproduce the plants, which creates a tiny moat.
Designer plants follow a distribution of innovations curve similar to iPhones: novel features get announced at events for nerds, who buy them first at ultra-high prices either for themselves or to sell them to Influencers who model the new plants to the early majority through fancy Arch Digest pics. At this point, the price can be low enough for the early majority to spread the desire like fire through hot Instagram pics and word of mouth until the plant is part of the basic category for the late majority and the laggards.
Completely unmodified Alocacias, Fiddle Leaf Figs, and Philodendrons have existed for millions of years and yet they became trendy in 2024. Not by chance, but by social design. Right now, consumers don’t want Barbie plants that fly or cook dinner. In this Instagramy and Tiktoky world, taste and distribution are all you need.
Mega side note: My dream is to bring all kinds of GOAT artists along in the creative process — What would it look like for Billie Elish to release an album where each song has its own flower, designed to express the same feeling that the song does? As consumers have reached a saturation point for digital-only products, biology serves as the merged experience they crave. Billie models the flowers in her videos, brands them as hers, sends her fans over to the Flower Co website where they can order them. Some of them tell the story of a broken heart, others are meant to give to your crush or your significant other. Perhaps some to a parent, sibling, or mentor too. They can also buy the limited edition Billie 3D printed glass pot as an immortal object in which they can place their next Flower Co order. Instagram and TikTok word of mouth between fans drive sales.
Patterns that are alive
At this point, you may be wondering (as I am) what the hell this thing you’re reading is and why it’s called Poets of Living Objects. I’ll now take a tiny step away from plants to explain.
In biology, we refer to DNA bases as “letters”, the genome as a “book”, and genetics as a “language” all the time. Furthermore, Dawkins’ The Genetic Book of the Dead argues that anatomy, instincts, and biochemistry are a series of keys to the locks that constituted their ancestral environments.
Though buildings are not alive in the same way that biological beings are, in the Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander concludes that the central task of architecture is the creation of a single and evolving language that responds to environmental patterns (like the keys and locks) and everyone can use to design the buildings that truly solve their needs and make people feel good.
I therefore think that our job as future biodesigners should too involve the creation a biological language that everyone can contribute to and use to create biology with completely new forms and functions. The organism, not as a simple material or a means of producing it, but as a living and interactive experience itself. Through the use of this new biological language, future biodesigners will be poets of living objects.
Once you master the syntax, the goal of the pattern language is to reclaim the intuitive way of building that lies within you, and only you can only access through your feelings. The Timeless Way of Building showed me that our world is not nearly as beautiful as it can be, and it made me feel responsible for a) helping prevent biological technology from being used to create products that make people feel awful, and b) helping more vote for the future they want to see, by speaking biology.
[People] have lost confidence in their own judgment. They have handed over the right to design, and lost their own pattern languages so utterly that they will do anything which architects tell them (…) Yet, architects themselves, have lost their intuitions too. Since they no longer have a widely shared language which roots them in the ordinary feelings people have, they are also prisoners of the absurd and special languages which they have made in private — Christopher Alexander
I’m glad that people like Josie Zayner, Dan Grushkin, Keoni Gandall, Sebastian Cocioba, and Nick Desnoyer share the belief that new living objects, and the ability to create them, should be in the hands of billions. I’m only worried there’s not enough of us. What if we’re all wrong and organisms will suffer when we modify them simply to amuse ourselves? What if, even I as a woman, am still thinking through an oppressive patriarchic mind that deems herself worthy of determining another living thing’s fate?
The last word in the title of this essay, “object”, is meant as an ecofeminist question on the way we see nature. Darwin’s theory of evolution removed the notion that there was a single master orchestrator behind the music of biology, including us. While this might have invited some to reflect on their resemblance to fellow animals, I also wonder how the lack of a creator that resembles us might have made other organisms less valuable in our minds — if every tree had a human creator behind it, if it was as unique and unmistakeable as a Picasso, would we hold it in higher regard?
We are living patterns, and so are our ideas. Please write new living poems into my mind by sending your thoughts via your preferred bioanthena so I can think a little different. Happy new year! :D
wonderful essay, just wonderful