Operation Biodegradable: Growing a neurosurgery operating room

Bound by material and process-driven explorations of mycelium and textile substrates, a live speculative project situated within the context of the neurosurgery operating room evolves to demonstrate the scope, potential and importance of student-driven biodesign approaches.

Operation Biodegradable explores how regenerative biomaterials, specifically mycelium-textile composites, can be employed to radically rethink the material culture of surgical environments. Through this paper we seek to outline the speculative approaches, methods and outcomes that result from this exploration, as well as proposing future directions and propositions.

Guided by an imperative to ‘grow’ the operating room environment, the project brings together textile design students from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), artists, researchers, textiles and soft-robotics academics and a consultant neurosurgeon to reconsider a novel space and function, novel materials and inquisitive approaches to their growth, design and making. Rooted in speculative design theory, the project provokes students to envision alternative medical futures shaped not by disposability, but by living, compostable materials that confront conventional paradigms of clinical sterility and waste.

This paper highlights the way in which the process that evolves serves both as research methodology and communicative strategy, provoking critical reflection, generating prototypes, and inviting dialogue at the intersection of biotechnology, sustainability, and public health. Working directly with living organisms, students encounter the complexity and unpredictability of biofabrication, learning to design with rather than controlling the biological systems. This hands-on, material-led inquiry fosters new literacies in working with life as a collaborator. Operation Biodegradable exemplifies how cultivating biodesigners traverses beyond conventional pedagogical frameworks. It requires nurturing curiosity, criticality, and the courage to imagine ecologically entangled futures.

Students act not only as makers, but also as mediators and proposers. Through engagement with multiple stakeholders, they develop contextually relevant prototypes and propositions and facilitate knowledge exchange between scientific stakeholders and the public. Exhibiting their outcomes at the recent Edinburgh International Science Festival in 2025 enabled broad community engagement and worked to foster public dialogue across sustainability, design, medical waste and biocompatibility.