Daniela Amandolese
Daniela Amandolese is a biodesigner, researcher and educator whose practice explores emerging bio-based materials, living systems and regenerative approaches to design. Working across material research, design and artistic experimentation, she investigates how designers can move beyond the idea of matter as a passive resource and instead engage with materials as active participants in processes of transformation.
Her recent research focuses particularly on living materials and more-than-human forms of co-design. Through projects involving mycelium, biological processes, digital fabrication and robotics, Amandolese examines how design can emerge through interaction between organisms, technological systems, environmental conditions and human intervention. Her project Growing Futures: Mycelium – Robots – Human Ecosystem, developed in collaboration with the Basque BioDesign Center within the MUSAE programme, explored generative mycelium structures produced through the interaction of fungal growth, discarded wool, parametric design and robotic processes.
Negotiating with Algae: A Site-Responsive Material Practice
During the Koynẽ Program residency at ÖRES on Örö Island, Finland, in August 2026, Amandolese extended this research towards marine environments through the project
Negotiating with Algae: A Site-Responsive Material Practice.
Rather than approaching algae as a raw material to be standardised or controlled, the project considers it as a living and responsive material system. Observation, negotiation and environmental collaboration become part of the design process, allowing the properties and transformations of the material to influence how the work develops.
The research unfolded through three interconnected strands. A Temporal Atlas of Algae documented algae collected around the island at different stages — fresh, drying, dried and decomposing — recording variations in colour, texture, moisture, smell and exposure to environmental conditions. Sea Skins / Algae Matter explored algae through material experiments including drying, pressing, boiling and combinations with locally available substances such as sand, wood fibres and paper pulp. A series of site-responsive interventions subsequently placed the material back into the landscape, where wind, sunlight, humidity and time continued to transform it.
Through these processes, Negotiating with Algae approaches material research not simply as the development of a new biomaterial, but as a way of investigating relationships between material agency, place, ecological processes and design practice. The changing conditions of Örö become part of the work itself, shifting the role of the designer from controlling material outcomes towards observing, facilitating and negotiating with living and changing systems.
THANKS
The travel of Danielato Örö Island was supported by ÖRES Residency and Koyne Program.
Photos by: © Daniela Amandolese