BioScaffolds

BACKGROUND: This research is contextualised within the fields of real-time robotics and Bio Architecture in manifesting systems in which material, biological and computational agencies are fused together. Within architecture, form is often created separately from the fabrication process. As a result, a potent, material-driven design process is easily overlooked. This research investigates the merging of the design and fabrication into one unified system, demonstrating methodologies in which physical material informs digital elements in the design process. CONTRIBUTION: ‘BioScaffolds’ is a body of work comprising 4 models and associated video documentation. It explores the robotic infusion of mycelium into a series of 3D printed biodegradable structures. Through this novel approach a new set of design tectonics and geometries have emerged, contributing to the fields of real-time robotics and design. The research demonstrates the design potential of vision systems in the reading of biological growth, and a robotic response of injecting a mycelium medium into sacrificial frameworks. The work advances architectural design through the development of an innovative design process and its application to the design of computational/biological hybrid objects. It contributes a novel design methodology in which computational and biological behaviour interacts through robotic systems to create a new formal language – one that exists between material, computational and robotic agencies. SIGNIFICANCE: ‘BioScaffolds’ was exhibited at Real/Material/Ethereal: 2nd Annual Design Research Conference Exhibition at Monash University. The work has been published in the exhibition catalogue. The curatorial team included Charlotte Day (Director of MUMA), Laura Harper (Monash) and Georgia Nowak (Monash).