Technological and economic opportunities, alongside the apparent ecological benefits, point to biodesign as a new industrial paradigm for the fabrication of products in the twenty-first century. The presented work studies plant roots as a biodesign material in the fabrication of self-supported 3D structures, where the biologically and digitally designed materials provide each other with structural stability. Taking a material-driven design approach, we present our systematic tinkering activities with plant roots to better understand and anticipate their responsive behaviour. These helped us to identify the key design parameters and advance the unique potential of plant roots to bind discrete porous structures. We illustrate this binding potential of plant roots with a hybrid 3D object, for which plant roots connect 600 computationally designed, optimized, and fabricated bioplastic beads into a low stool.

技术和经济机会以及明显的生态效益表明，生物设计是二十一世纪制造产品的新工业范式。提出的工作研究了自支撑3D结构制造中作为生物设计材料的植物根，其中生物和数字设计的材料相互提供了结构稳定性。采用材料驱动的设计方法，我们以植物为基础介绍我们的系统修补活动，以更好地了解和预期其响应行为。这些帮助我们确定了关键的设计参数，并提高了植物根系结合离散的多孔结构的独特潜力。我们说明了植物根与混合3D对象的这种结合潜力，为此植物根连接了600个经过计算的设计，