A look at products that are alive or made by living systems—like self-healing materials, responsive packaging, and microbial textiles.
What Are Living Products?
They’re not just bio-inspired—they’re biologically active.
Living products are made with or by living cells, fungi, or microbes. Some are still alive when in use. Others are created by biological processes that give them unique, adaptive qualities. These materials can heal, sense, grow, or break down naturally—radically changing how we make and interact with products.
From Manufacturing to Cultivation
We’re moving from assembling materials to cultivating them.
Traditional products are made through extraction, machining, or molding. Living products are:
- Grown in bioreactors, fermentation chambers, or even on-site
- Designed using synthetic biology and biomaterials science
- Integrated into systems with built-in responsiveness or sustainability
This isn’t just about sustainability—it’s about function. Living systems can do things static materials can’t.
Examples of Living and Biofabricated Products
What we grow now goes far beyond food.
Here’s a snapshot of what’s already in development or on the market:
- Self-healing building materials: Concrete infused with bacteria that fill in cracks automatically when exposed to water
- Responsive packaging: Films made from microbial cellulose that change in humidity or degrade on schedule
- Microbial textiles: Leather-like materials grown from yeast or kombucha bacteria—durable, biodegradable, and cruelty-free
- Living sensors: Fungi-based wearables that detect changes in air quality or body signals
These aren’t gimmicks—they are high-performance alternatives to petroleum-based products.
Why Living Systems Offer a Design Advantage
Living systems are adaptive, efficient, and inherently circular.
Unlike conventional materials, living systems:
- Build themselves using minimal energy
- Respond to environmental signals (heat, light, pH)
- Repair damage without external intervention
- Decompose safely, reducing waste at the end of life
This introduces the possibility of dynamic products—those that evolve over time or adapt to their users.
Educational Implications: Teaching Design with Biology
Tomorrow’s designers will need to co-create with life.
Students in fields from architecture to fashion must understand:
- Material biology as a core design tool
- Bioethics and safety when working with living systems
- Interdisciplinary thinking—merging design, biology, and computation
Future-ready classrooms will include grow labs, biodesign studios, and living systems modeling as standard learning environments.
Risks and Responsible Innovation
With living products come new questions.
As we embed life into more of our built world, we must consider:
- Containment and lifespan: What happens if a product keeps growing?
- Regulation: How are these materials classified and tested?
- Ethical transparency: Who controls the biology behind the product?
Responsible design means integrating lifecycle planning, safety protocols, and community dialogue from the start.
The Future: Products That Live, Die, and Evolve
We are entering the post-industrial design era.
Living products signal a shift from static to adaptive design. The goal is no longer to build things to last forever—but to build them to perform, adapt, and biodegrade on purpose.
From wearable tech to architectural materials, the frontier of design is alive. And it’s just getting started.
