Swissnex, Parsons School of Art and Design History and Theory, Zurich University of the Arts, and the Biodesign Challenge present a discussion on the practice of design in a more-than-human world.
This special edition of Lens of Impact, hosted at the Planetary Embassy, explores biodesign as a mode of planetary diplomacy. Biodesign, an emerging field at the intersection of biology, design, and technology, treats living systems as collaborators in the design process, rather than resources to be extracted. Biodesign translates natural and ecological processes into tangible human experiences, helping us recognize our deep entanglement with the more-than-human world.
We are joined for this conversation by the ZHdK team behind CHORNOZEM, a project that uses curcumin-based detection and drone imaging to reveal soil contamination caused by war in Ukraine. By making hidden ecological damage visible, CHORNOZEM exemplifies how design can serve as a tool for awareness, accountability, and new modes of collaboration. The project, designed by ZHdK students, was the winner of the 2025 Biodesign Challenge.
Speakers from ZHdK, Parsons School of Design, and the Biodesign Challenge will discuss diverse approaches to working with and learning from ecological systems, from the speculative to the scientific, highlighting how biodesign can open alternative pathways for creating knowledge, shaping ethics, and imagining futures beyond extraction.
Presented by Swissnex, The School of Art, Design History, & Theory at Parsons School of Design, Zurich University of the Arts, and the Biodesign Challenge.
Rory O’Dea is the Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Design & Dean in the School of
Art and Design History and Theory (ADHT). His scholarship explores the ways that visual art intersects with ecology, materiality, and speculative forms of fiction and theory as a means to produce alternative modes of knowledge and ways of being. His monograph titled Robert Smithson, Land Art, and Speculative Realities was published by Routledge in October 2023. He was awarded a research fellowship at the Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson Foundation in
support of this project in 2022. Recent scholarship appears in the edited volumes Entangled and
Empowered: Agency in Multispecies Communities and Perspective: A Global Survey of Space
Design in Art History, as well as Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Prior to Parsons, Rory was a visiting critic at the Yale University School of Art’s MFA program as well as a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. He received his PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Jane Pirone is an Associate Professor of Design Ecologies at Parsons School of Design. Their
creative and transdisciplinary practice engages with living systems, new technologies,
speculative fabulation, and participatory futures from critical, queer and post-human perspectives. They are a co-founder of Collective Effervescence, which co-designs and facilitates generative spaces as a mode of social practice fostering collaborative, creative, and critical capacities.
Jane is currently serving on the steering committee of the Biodesign Challenge & Symposium,
has been an Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, a Creative in Residence at Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey, and a Fellow at the Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies in New York City. They served as Dean of Parsons School of Design Strategies from 2015-2019 and as Director of the Communication Design program from 2006-2011.
Paul Rubery is the Executive Director of Biodesign Challenge. He studied Art History with an emphasis on Visual Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester before pursuing a Ph.D. in Art History, Theory & Criticism at Stony Brook University. He has occupied various roles in cultural nonprofits, serving most recently as the chief curator of a historic natural history museum on Long Island. His published writings can be found in the Journal of Visual
Culture, Media-N: The Journal of the New Media Caucus of the CAA, and
Continental Philosophy Review.
Kirill Kohl, co-founder of Chornozem, is a designer and researcher working on the intersection of ecological, digital and transitional practices. After graduating with honours at the University of Arts in Offenbach, Germany, he worked in several award-winning studios,
such as Barski Design or Topotek 1, before joining the Master's programme in Interaction Design at the Zurich University of Arts in Switzerland, where he mainly focused his research on disaster resilience strategies, before starting the development of Chornozem with Yaroslava Shylyk and Olivia Menezes. At Chornozem, he explores ethnographic aspects for
the development of culturally and ecologically sensitive strategies, while examining the relation between soil, human and non-human actors, system design and hardware implementation.
Yaroslava Shylyk, co-founder of Chornozem, works at the intersection of design, art, and
environmental science. She explores how bioindicators, digital technologies, and visual
storytelling can reveal hidden soil pollution and foster new ways of sensing ecological damage. Beyond Chornozem, she pursues interdisciplinary research in interaction design and digital technologies, with a focus on translating complex scientific challenges into accessible experiences, participatory tools, and critical artistic practices.
Olivia Clair Menezes, co-founder of Chornozem, is a designer and researcher based in Zürich with a background in industrial and interaction design. Her practice spans product development, sustainable manufacturing, and systems design, with a focus on more-than-human approaches that explore how materials and infrastructures can promote resilience and connectedness. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Interaction Design at Zurich
University of the Arts while advancing soil remediation and ecological resilience through design.
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