Conference Agenda

This paper explores how design practices involving biomaterials can promote attuning within more-than-human temporalities. Drawing on two comparative case studies working with decomposing organisms to make and unmake materials, it examines how growth and decay unfold across different ecological timescales. Through concepts of noticing, pace, and rhythm, the studies explore how designers negotiate when to pause, accelerate, or distribute agency within multispecies collaborations. Rather than treating biomaterials as substitutes for synthetics, the paper positions them as temporal components of ecosystems shaped by humidity, temperature, and microbial diversity. Attuning emerges as a practice of more-than-human coordination and care. The findings contribute to temporal design discourse by testing theoretical promises against the pressures of practice, revealing tensions that scholarly discussion alone cannot anticipate. The paper proposes rhythm and pace as practical navigational tools through which designers can communicate ecological temporalities to clients and position themselves as facilitators of more-than-human processes.