Verindi Vekemans, Stefano Parisi, Jun Wu, Elvin Karana
Materials are usually expected to remain stable, while damage can signal wear, failure or the need for replacement. Engineered Living Materials challenge this expectation by using biological processes to give materials new abilities, such as self-healing. This opens unfamiliar possibilities for future products. Healing might take hours, days, or weeks. It could happen almost invisibly, gradually change a product’s appearance, or leave a lasting trace. But what would it actually be like to live with products that heal? Exploring this question is difficult when the materials themselves are still being developed, and future self-healing products do not yet exist.
What if everyday products could heal themselves?
Self-Healing Futures is part of a PhD design research project conducted within NextSkins, a European research project funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder programme to develop new Engineered Living Materials. As the self-healing material is still being developed, people cannot yet experience what future products made from it might be like. The project therefore uses design to make these possibilities visible and tangible before they fully exist.
Material samples, visualisations, physical models, videos, and future product scenarios reveal different aspects of the material and its healing process. These have been developed and tested in workshops and public exhibitions, where researchers, designers and visitors can explore future applications and different ways healing might unfold. Together, these representations make an emerging material easier to experience, discuss, and shape through design.
Self-healing living materials can help products remain useful for longer by allowing them to recover from damage. But their potential for a thriving planet depends on more than whether the technology works. It is also important to evaluate how people will understand, experience, and respond to materials that behave in unfamiliar ways. Self-Healing Futures brings these questions into the conversation while the technology is still emerging. The future products shown are not predictions or finished solutions: the material and its self-healing abilities are still being developed. Instead, they help people explore different possibilities, raise questions, and discuss what kinds of self-healing futures they would, or would not, want to live with.
This PhD research project is conducted within the EU-funded NextSkins project (EIC Pathfinder)
