Writing
2010

This paper appeared in Second Nature: International Journal of Creative Media, RMIT, Australia, March 2010.

Our increasingly complex scientific world functions in the realm of the microscopic, obscuring the macroscopic big picture. Secreted away in the laboratory, biotechnology is unapproachable, yet it promises to change our lives. Perhaps we need a discipline connecting with the human- scale context: the expected and unexpected implications of emerging technologies on everyday life. Describing two design projects I produced at the Royal College of Art that focus on the emerging field of synthetic biology (The Synthetic Kingdom and Growth Assembly), I propose that design can engage with science and technology in new ways, bringing the designer’s skills of functionality, synthesis, collaboration and tangibility to allow us—biotech’s ultimate consumers—better access to question and consider our alternative futures.