16:00 - 16:45

Watch video online (stream)
Chapel St.Joost, Breda on 19 November 2021 (live)

Full Program

Elvin Karana

Designing Living Artefacts

Full program

Subject of presentation

When organisms are still alive in the material outcome of the design process and their envisaged usage is extended to the use time, livingness becomes a persistent material quality in design, and the design outcome is a living artefact. How do we design living artefacts that are assimilated into our everyday life? I will present three principles—Living Aesthetics, Mutualistic Care, and Habitabilities—as fundamental loci of designing for livingness in bio-design. 

Concise resume

Elvin Karana is Professor of Materials Innovation and Design in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology, where she founded and directs the Materials Experience Lab. Giving emphasis to materials’ role in design as experiential and yet deeply rooted in their inherent properties, Elvin explores and navigates the productive shifts between materials science and design for materials and product development in synergy. In 2019, she initiated the Biobased Art and Design Research Group at Avans and founded the creative bio-design research lab Material Incubator in Den Bosch, that aims at designing materials that incorporate living organisms, and exploring their potential in fostering an alternative notion of the everyday. Material Incubator brings together researchers and practitioners from Avans University of Applied Sciences and Delft University of Technology.