Stanford University, Design

BioLit

Sophia Liu, Ginger Buck, Ani Johnson

What if your next material was alive? BioLit is a biofabrication platform built around a simple belief: that everyone deserves to feel the joy of making something in collaboration with a living organism. Users germinate seeds, sculpt custom molds, and watch living roots fill the form — roots bioengineered to grow vivid pink using the RUBY pigment system, a set of genes derived from sugar beet and four o'clock flower. The color is intentional. Pink sparks curiosity, signals that something has been designed, and invites questions. Beyond the kit, BioLit envisions an open community platform where bio-makers share molds, results, and ideas — seeding a generation of makers who are as comfortable working with DNA as they are with wood, clay, or code.

Charlotte McCurdy (US) is a designer and researcher working across biodesign, biomaterials, and bioengineering, with a focus on biogenic systems for climate-positive manufacturing. She is Core Lecturer at Stanford University’s d.school, where she leads courses, research, and design projects that explore fashion as a testbed for systems-scale decarbonization. Her work bridges novel material development, cultural adoption, and industrial translation, combining lab-based experimentation with exhibitions, patents, and publication. McCurdy’s practice treats design as a mode of inquiry that links things, humans, and systems.