Biodesigning in a Different Patch: Place, Scale and Regenerative Materialities

From unceded Australian Country and neighbouring regions, this paper investigates biodesign as a situated, multi-scalar practice, attentive to place, material ecologies, and more‑than‑human relations, reporting from a different ‘patch’ to the dominant centre. Drawing on deep‑time Indigenous knowledge systems and emerging biotechnological practices, it contributes a relational, place‑responsive orientation for biodesign, extending its conceptual, ethical, and methodological possibilities. Through auto-ethnographic reflection and case studies spanning Indigenous-led practices, biomaterials research, and regenerative infrastructures, it reveals how biodesign is enacted differently when grounded in specific bioregional, cultural, and material conditions. The practices discussed in the paper demonstrate a bioinclusive aesthetic – embracing growth, decay, contamination, and microbial co‑habitation as regenerative design forces for shaping multispecies futures. Reframing biodesign in this way, as a pluriversal and multi-scalar activity, this study puts forward a set of principles for multi-scalar biodesign that foreground locality, relationality and responsibility when designing with living systems.