Dr Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa

Carolina's research investigates the culture, practices, tools, and economies involved in working with and designing for living systems across various scales, from experiences and products to architecture and urban ecologies. Her work aims to imagine and deliver potential futures that challenge and provoke discussions around technological, social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental issues.

Currently, she is exploring dust as a material device to investigate temporality and understand the past and future from a microbial perspective, contributing to the concept of a non-human archive. The first iteration of her project, The Materialised Temporality of Dust, was recently exhibited at Ars Electronica.

Carolina completed her PhD by creative practice at the School of Architecture, Newcastle University, focusing on the use of living and semi-living matter in design contexts. Her thesis, Bio-material Probes: Design Engagements with Living Systems, features a series of interventions and projects that examine how design practices evolve when microorganisms are considered as design materials.

Carolina’s practice focuses on integrating living systems into design across different contexts. Her work spans material explorations, art installations, and performance-based projects, all driven by a commitment to addressing social and environmental challenges. By incorporating biological and ecological perspectives, she pushes the boundaries of traditional design, fostering innovative approaches that reflect the complexities of human existence within broader ecological and societal frameworks.

Carolina’s interdisciplinary practice draws from art, design, technology, anthropology, and the humanities, encouraging critical discourse on the role of design, technology, and living systems in shaping sustainable futures. Her work challenges conventional design paradigms by engaging with living systems—such as microorganisms and plants—to create experiences that explore the ethical and environmental implications of design.

By blurring the boundaries between human and non-human actors, Carolina’s projects encourage reflection on how humans coexist with other life forms and how design can address pressing global issues. Through this lens, she aims to provoke thought and foster dialogue on the potential of design to shape a more inclusive, sustainable, and collaborative future, where living systems and design coexist in meaningful ways.

2024 – Reverse Alchemy. £20,000 in hardware procurement from international tech company.

2019 – 2024 - Internal RCA Funding. £4,250

2021- Luminous: Interactive and Immersive Experience Design. Funder: LG Display. £89,062

2020- Festival of the Mind, University of Sheffield, £5,000

2019- Drifter, Whisper, Trickster, UCL £3,000

2018- Research Associate, project Niches of Organic Territories in Bio-Augmented Design, which has an approximate, AHRC. £200,000

2018 – Martin Fellowship, Naturalis Biodiversity Center. €2,600, and received £1,000 for the Biomaker

2017 – Biomaker Challenge and a Bench-top Controlled Environment Growth Chamber. £5,000

2016 – Making Life, Finish Society of Bioart. £1,200

2012 – PhD studentship, AHRC and Newcastle University. £45,000

2011 - Latin America Scholarship from Newcastle University. £3,500

2004 - Excellency Award, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). £6,000

AHRC and Newcastle University, PhD studentship, 2012

Latin America Scholarship. Newcastle University, 2011

Excellency Award. Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Ciudad de Mexico (ITESM). 2004

The Materialised Temporality of Dust

2023-present

The Materialised Temporality of Dust is a multidisciplinary research project that leverages dust as a material device to explore concepts of temporality and investigate the past and future from a microbial perspective. By treating dust as an active archive that encompasses both human and non-human histories, the project raises fundamental questions: How can we experience the history of a site through a microbial lens? What does a non-human archive entail?

This initiative invites audiences to engage with the concept of the pluriverse—a world of many worlds. The project's first phase immerses participants in a virtual reality and spatial sound experience, allowing them to navigate the Royal College of Art's Library not merely as humans, but as integral components of the microbial world. Through this innovative approach, participants re-experience the library, gaining insights into the intricate interactions of microbial life and the histories embedded within dust, fostering a deeper understanding of our interconnected existence. The project was recently exhibited at the Beyond the Veil: Unravelling Unseen & Unheard at Ars Electronica 2024.

Reverse Alchemy

2023-Present

Reverse Alchemy is a research project that brings scholars from the RCA and Korean National University of Arts to explore the future synergy between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) beyond conventional R&D frameworks that often dictate the trajectory of new technologies. The phrase ‘reverse alchemy’ provides a neat metaphor for intervening in technical processes to engineer their outcomes toward more organic ends.

The project proposes a series of design workshops across two institutions and geographies that invite designers and researchers to work in a blue-sky model, modelling possibilities at the intersection between XR and IA. To develop coherent proposals that enable a responsible AI and XR ecosystem that takes into consideration sustainability, human well-being and collective good, and has the potential to transform economy and society. The project secured £15,000 in hardware procurement from international tech company.

Post-Anthropocentric Design (PAD) Lab

2021-present

PADLab is a research laboratory and creative workshop, developed at the RCA and partnered with Shenkar College of Art in Tel Aviv, created as a research and practice testbed for changing human-centred perspectives through practical, accessible design-led interventions. PADLab acts as a platform for communication and collaboration between designers, researchers and policymakers and is designed to continuously strive for balance between creative and speculative work and fact-driven research and hypotheses. A forthcoming publication examines the value of multispecies collaboration and inter-species perspective-taking, specifically as a mode of destabilising existing paradigms to enable more adaptive and resilient decision-making.

NOTBAD (Niches for Organic Territories in Bio-Augmented Design)

2017-2018

NOTBAD is a multi-disciplinary research project exploring the notion of ‘Probiotic Architecture’ in which materials are ‘seeded’ with beneficial microbes to modify the microbiome of its users. The project looks at fabrication techniques to control the chemical makeup of materials and their porosity landscapes, optimising them to host specific bacterial species. The microbial communities in each material are fostered to outcompete microbes that cause diseases and prevent the development of ‘super-bugs’ that are resistant to antibiotics. NOTBAD takes a humanistic and design-led approach in looking at the integration of seeded materials into wider cultural narratives and imaginaries of health, disease, and filth. The project was exhibited at the Biological Buildings exhibition at the Barbican Centre in 2019.

Biomaterial Probes, Design Engagements with Living systems

2012-2017

Biomaterial Probes is a research project that explores the possibility and consequences of integrating living systems into the processes of design and fabrication in architecture. It raises the question: what methods and ways of exploration are needed to engage directly with living systems to uncover design possibilities? To explore this research question, it proposes a creative methodology of biomaterial probes: design situations that provide the context to explore the design potential of biological systems, but that suspend the requirement for a practical design outcome at the outset. As part of the exploration, four biomaterial probes are mobilised to define different approaches to designing form with living systems, starting with parametrics and evolving towards an approach that considers non-human agency and assemblages.

Selected Publications

2024

Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Antony Nevin and Campbell Orme. The materialised temporality of dust (2024) In Research Directions: Biotechnology Design. Cambridge University Press [In Press]

Barrios-O’Neill, D., Ramirez-Figueroa, C., Jarvis, C., Dudek, L., Ben-Meir, N.B., Falomo, E., Pauzner, M. and Kutok, O. (2023). “Systems Play: Using Experimental Art and Design Methods to Empower Systems Change.” [submitted, under review]

Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Gian Luca Amadei, Nirit Binyamini Ben-Meir , Cecilia Martin and Adam Kaasa, (2024)Experience as a transformational practice Vol. 6 No. 2 (2024): GLAD-HE 2023 Post-Symposium Publication: Gathering Ourselves

Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa and Michal Pauzner (2024), Entanglements of Care. In 100 Years of Care (ed. Rodgers P, Bremmer C). AHRC

Hadas Zohar, Nirit Binyamini Ben-Meir, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Danielle Barrios-O’Neill, Michal Pauzner, Oded Kutok, Laura Dudek, and Erin Robinson (2024). Design Methods for Accessing the Pluriverse. In Companion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 417–420.

2023

Luis Hernan and Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa (2023) A Home with a Future. Digital Domesticity and the Vague Fictions of Silicon Valley, Architecture and Culture.

Gizem Oktay, Yuta Ikeya, Minha Lee, Bahareh Barati, Youngsil Lee, Yuning Chen, Larissa Pschetz, and Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa. (2023) Designing with the more-than-human: Temporalities of thinking with care. In Companion Publication of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ‘23 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 104–106.

2022

Barrios-O’Neill, Danielle, Dudek, Laura, Ben Meir, Nirit Binyamini, Falomo, Elena, Jarvis, Charlotte and Ramirez-Figueroa, Carolina (2022) Navigating Wicked Futures Through More-Than-Human Perspectives: Experiments in design education. In: Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD11, 3-16 Oct 2022, Brighton, United Kingdom

Hernan, Luis and Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, “A Luminous Abstraction: 5G Narratives and Futuring Otherwise,” Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture 7, no. 3 (2022), https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/a-luminous-abstraction-5G-narratives

Pschetz, L., Ramirez-Figueroa, C., and Revans, J. (2022) Learning from creative biology: Promoting transdisciplinarity through vocabularies of practice, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain

Välk, S. et al. (2022). Narratives in Biodesign – Bridging Methods, Processes and Tools. In: Bruyns, G., Wei, H. (eds) [ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes. IASDR 2021. Springer, Singapore.

2021

Luis Hernan & Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa (2021) Time is out of Joint: Digital Domesticity and Magical Realism, Journal of Architectural Education, 75:2, 184-191

Phillip Gough, Jack Forman, Pat Pataranutaporn, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Clare Cooper, Angela Vujic, David Sun Kong, Raphael Kim, Pattie Maes, Hiroshi Ishii, Misha Sra, and Naseem Ahmadpour. 2021. Speculating on Biodesign in the Future Home. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 77, 1–5.

Phillip Gough, Larissa Pschetz, Naseem Ahmadpour, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Clare Cooper, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, and Oron Catts. 2020. The Nature of Biodesigned Systems: Directions for HCI. In Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS’ 20 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 389–392.

Välk, S. et al. (2022). Narratives in Biodesign – Bridging Methods, Processes and Tools. In: Bruyns, G., Wei, H. (eds) [ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes. IASDR 2021. Springer, Singapore.

Hernan, L. and Ramirez-Figueroa, C. (2021) Domesticity and digital eugenics : design cultures of Silicon Valley. In:Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021, Volume #2. , pp. 4542-4550.

Ramirez-Figueroa, C. and Hernan, L. (2021) Bio-revolutions : radical change, design cultures and non-humans. In: Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021, Volume #2, pp. 1208-1221.

2020

Ramirez-Figueroa C, Beckett R (2020), Living with buildings, living with microbes. Probiosis and architecture, Architectural Research Quarterly, Cambridge University Press

Ramirez-Figueroa C, Hernan L, Lin, P (2020). Living Ashes: Associated Milieus and Distributed Agencies. Special Number on Microperformativity, Performance Research, Routledge

Ramirez-Figueroa C, Watt T. (2020), Despite the optimistic predictions for the Design of Care, what does the doing of care really do? in Does Design Care...?! (ed. Rodgers P, Bremmer C, Innella G). Lancaster University ISBN: 978-1-86220-372-3.

2019

Ramirez-Figueroa C. (2019), P is for Puzzlement in An Illustrated* A to Z for the Design of Care (ed. Rodgers P, Bremmer C, Innella G). Lancaster University.

Beckett, R., Nair, S., Ramirez-Figueroa C. (2019), NOTBAD in Design Research for Change 2019 (ed. Rodgers P, Bremmer C, Innella G). Lancaster University. ISBN: 978-1-86220-363-1.

2018

Ramirez-Figueroa C., Hernan L., Pei-Ying L., The biological unseen: producing and mediating imaginaries of protocells In: The Latent Image 2018, 5th international conference on trandisciplinary imaging at the intersection of art, science and culture, April 2018 Edinburgh

Hernan L, Ramirez-Figueroa C., The technological invisible: image making as an exercise of power In: The Latent Image 2018, 5th international conference on trandisciplinary imaging at the intersection of art, science and culture, April 2018, Edinburgh

2017

Dade-Robertson M., Ramirez-Figueroa C. and Hernan L. (2017) Bio-materialism: Experiments in biological material computation In: New Disciplines of Making – Shared Knowledge in Doing: Research through Design Conference. March 2017, Edinburgh

2016

Ramirez-Figueroa C., Hernan L., Guyet A. and Dade-Robertson M. (2016) Bacterial Hygromorphs: material proxies as design pedagogy to engage with living technologies. In: ACADIA 16: Posthuman Frontiers [Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).

Dade-Robertson M., Mitrani H., Wipat A., Zhang M., Corral J., Ramirez-Figueroa C. and Hernan L. (2016) Thinking Soils: A Synthetic Biology approach to material based design computation. In: ACADIA 16: Posthuman Frontiers [Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).

2014

Dade-Robertson M., Ramirez-Figueroa C. and Zhang M. (2014) Material Ecologies for Synthetic Biology: Bio-mineralization and the state space of design. Computer Aided Design, Special Edition on Material Ecology Design and Computational Issues

Dade-Robertson M., Ramirez-Figueroa C. and Zhang M. (2014). Radical Vernacular: Bacterial Architecture on Mars. JBIS: Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 67.

2013

Dade-Robertson M., Zhang M., Ramirez-Figueroa C., Hernan L., Beattie J., Lyon A., Ryden M. and Welford M. Proto-materials: Material Practices in Architecture at Molecular and Cellular Scales. In: Michael Stacey, ed. Prototyping Architecture. London: Building Centre Trust, 2013, pp.211-223.

Ramirez-Figueroa C., Dade-Robertson M. and Zhang M. Synthetic Biology as a material design practice. In: Praxis and Poetics: Research through Design Conference. September 2013, Newcastle.

Ramirez-Figueroa C. and Dade-Robertson M. (2013) Adaptive Morphologies: Towards a Morphogenesis of Material Construction. In: ACADIA 13: Adaptive Architecture [Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) .

2012

Ramirez-Figueroa C. and Dade-Robertson M. Recombinatorial personal spaces of knowledge. In Digital Research. 2012, Oxford, UK.

Selected Exhibitions and performances

(2024) Beyond the Veil: Unravelling Unseen & Unheard Narratives, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria

(2024) Colour made manifesto, Pumphouse, Batterse Park, London UK

(2019) Drifter, Whisper, Trickster in Festival of the Mind, Sheffield, UK

(2019) Biological Buildings, The Barbican Centre, London, UK

(2018) Living with adaptive architecture, Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, UK

(2017) Bio-material probes, design engagements with living systems. Newcastle University, UK

(2016) Living ashes II performance

CLICK Festival, Contemporary art, science & technology, Helsingør, DK

(2016) Bio Apartment 3—Succession. National Taiwan Museum, Nanmen Park, Taiwan

(2015) Making Life, Living ashes. Lasipalatsi Gallery, Helsinki

(2014) Ordinary Takeover. Architectural Association, School of Architecture, London, UK

(2013) Praxis and poetics. Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK

(2005) Designs from the Future. MUNAL Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, Mx

Member of the RCA Honours Committee (2024 to date)

Member of the RCA Senate (2022 -to date)

RCA representative, London Doctoral Design Centre (2019-2022)

Finish Bioart Society (2014-2015)

Syn.de.bio network. (2014-2016)