ABSTRACT

The idea of contemporary Do-it-Yourself Biology (DIYbio) may have appeared in the 1950s. In the many tellings of its origin myths, the DIYbio, movement surfaced with the new century. Within a few years, iterations of DIYbio labs appeared in New York, Boston, Manchester, and Paris. There is much variation in their actual organization, but the principal movers and advocates acknowledge each other even as they continue to debate where the movement should go. In the everyday life of the lab, design matters only surfaced when decisions had to be made as to what objects to get into the warehouse. Everything had to be made suitable for the particular type of DIYbio lab this was going to be seen as. The design language, once embodied in tables and cabinets, was a statement to the audiences of the lab but perhaps most specifically to the “visitors”: schoolchildren, investors, the national media, and the State.