Conference Agenda

The paper explores the learning possible from including the public in explora-tions of more-than-human future visions. We presented an installation at a de-sign festival of a speculative scenario that emerged from ethnographic research with urban permaculture farmers, using sounds to represent concentrations of nutrients in soil. We studied how visitors wearing a sensor ring experienced the playing of these sounds upon insertion of a finger in the installation’s soil. Re-sponses underscore the importance of cultivating the skill of noticing through deep listening, alongside the profound connection thus established between humans and the more-than-human world. In a further contribution to more-than-human design, the paper examines implications for practices of noticing and pre-sents four principles for problematising and reimagining how data pertaining to the more-than-human world may be sensed and represented.

Designing by engaging more-than-human agents such as plants is a complex chal-lenge, as they have long been regarded as "ontologically inferior" resources pri-marily serving human needs. Emerging studies in the field of Plant Neurobiology are now breaking down knowledge barriers, gathering extraordinary data that recognize plant actions and behaviors guided by a distinct form of intelligence. Considering this breakthrough findings, this paper describes a 10-day workshop involving 52 international design students from Politecnico di Milano University that focused on experiencing plants in a former industrial area within the city borders. Through the years, this area has gone from desolation to a vibrant urban forest where plants and other life forms have flourished without human re-striction. With the contribution of botanists and local forest experts, the work-shop was conceived as a journey with the ambition of providing participants with an opportunity to design for plants as active stakeholders.

What does it mean to practice design in a world without human beings at its center? How can designers take meaningful action in a world in crisis? In this paper, I present initial findings from an experimental month-long immersion in a place humans and more-than-humans meet—a coastal wildlife refuge in the northeastern United States. I report on my experience in the field (notes, observations, and photos), reflections on my trajectory as a designer and researcher in the refuge, my evolving understanding of what it means to design with a more-than-human lens, and how my search for meaningful action led me toward ecological literacy as an approach to practice. In doing so, I offer three contributions: four vignettes demonstrating how entangled more-than-human webs reshape an experience of place, five interconnected considerations for more-than-human design, and a model for grounding design practice in cultivating ecological literacy.  

Microbes assume an indispensable role in design, given their inherent adaptability, functional diversity, and abundance. Yet, designing with microbes presents notable challenges for biodesigners, stemming from, for example, the distinct temporalities and scales of microbes. Conversely, cultivating microbial sensibilities—reflecting human comprehension and alignment with the distinctive characteristics of microbes—stands out as a unique potential of biodesign for fostering a deep connection between humans and other living entities. In response, we present the concept of “becoming microbes”, a philosophically grounded approach advocating for a non-anthropocentric stance in biodesign, aiming at immersing biodesigners in the realms of microbes with a fresh perspective for imagining the world through the lens of a microbe. By harnessing diverse microbial qualities, including motility and communication, we present various design avenues to explore the notion of becoming microbes. We reflect on the role of merging the biological with the immersive digital systems in this context.

Time is a crucial element in design, and even more so when it comes to designing for sustainability. Many designers approach sustainability from a problem-solving perspective, according to which time is linear (and therefore quantifiable) and the future is predictable (and therefore designable). Designerly time appears quintessentially modern and human. A welcome antidote can be found in more-than-human design perspectives, where a multitude of actants and agencies and their appropriate temporalities are given consideration and space. In this paper we add to such approaches by suggesting two ways to engage with more-than-human temporalities: noticing and care. We illustrate how these approaches may give way to new design practices by discussing the conceptualization and construction of a music festival stage in France. We argue that such design practices integrate ecological care into the design process by attuning the designer to the different scales and rhythms of ecosystems and their more-than-human members.