Crafting Ecosystems: Algae, Echinoids, and Algorithms for a New Biomimetic Design Experience

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the information system became an overwhelming and uncontrolled phenomenon. In response, between 2020 and 2022, Crafting Ecosystems developed a hybrid design system to highlight the crucial role of design in the information age, fostering the importance of preserving natural ecosystems. The project is focused on a dual temporal perspective, which was evident during subsequent pandemic lockdowns: the speed of media information through continuous digital flows and the slowness of natural ecosystems with their inexorable evolutionary times. Crafting Ecosystems is a design-driven system that blends the infosphere with nature, critical thinking, and empathy to encourage awareness of how planetary emergencies depend on the interconnected balance between all living and nonliving things, including animals, plants, and information. The project demonstrates the impact of digital information flows by facilitating real-time communication between natural and artificial ecosystems through shaping a seaweed and a sea urchin as biological systems informed by digital data flows.