Book launch Still Alive 2020 by Elvin Karana

The new publication of Professor Elvin Karana STILL ALIVE – Livingness as a Material Quality in Design is launched.

STILL ALIVE presents the year-long journey of researchers from Material Incubator (Avans University of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology and Willem de Kooning Academy), shedding light on the practical and social aspects of designing and living with living artefacts.

The publication

What if our everyday artefacts were alive?
What if they could sense, grow, adapt and eventually die?
How would we work, live and cohabitate with them?

By discovering ways to maintain the organisms’ aliveness, as a tangible manifestation of a biodesign process, livingness will become a persistent material quality in design, and the design outcome a living artefact. This proposal opens up a new and exciting design space where designers are invited to harness the potentials of living organisms for unique function-alities, interactions and expressions in the everyday.

Understanding livingness as a material quality suggests not only a fundamental shift in the ways we design, but also an alternative every-day cohabitation and interaction with objects that sense, grow, adapt and eventually die.

You can read the publication through this webpage, or get info on ordering the printed publication by sending an email to wjm.diepens@avans.nl