Ethics of Biotechnology

Fast-developing biotechnologies are rapidly reforming our social, cultural and environmental fabrics. The changes made by these technologies bring ethical challenges. How can designers embrace new technologies to create a better world, support equality, justice, and care for others? Focusing on the intersection between biotechnology and design, students investigated areas of waste and resources, health and violence, nature and artifice, work and leisure, procreation and ageing. Students hypothesised plausible future scenarios in 30 years and proposed speculative designs. Students were encouraged to be highly conceptual and speculative to provoke and question new ways of thinking about the relationships between technologies, living beings and environments.