Abstract
With the non-anthropocentric view, the materials—the non-human actors, can be seen as active contributors to the design process itself. Materials become carriers of a wide variety of information and reshape human and non-human relations as relational agencies. Many pioneer design activities that de-center humanity rethink the relationship among different material actors to reflect on the 'Anthropocene' issues. The approaches to designing for post-Anthropocene scenarios are usually provocative in various aspects. This paper proposes a speculative, material-centric design approach to engage discussions towards post-Anthropocene scenarios by rethinking the entanglement of human and non-human actors. This approach was used to conduct a workshop called 'Future matters'. By sharing its results, this paper aims to trigger more discussions on the en-riching roles material plays in post-anthropocentric design.
Keywords
material design, material speculation, non-anthropocentric design, anthropocene.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.518
Citation
Zhou, Z., Brück, V., and Holzbach, M. (2022) A material-centric approach in non-anthropocentric design, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.518
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
A material-centric approach in non-anthropocentric design
With the non-anthropocentric view, the materials—the non-human actors, can be seen as active contributors to the design process itself. Materials become carriers of a wide variety of information and reshape human and non-human relations as relational agencies. Many pioneer design activities that de-center humanity rethink the relationship among different material actors to reflect on the 'Anthropocene' issues. The approaches to designing for post-Anthropocene scenarios are usually provocative in various aspects. This paper proposes a speculative, material-centric design approach to engage discussions towards post-Anthropocene scenarios by rethinking the entanglement of human and non-human actors. This approach was used to conduct a workshop called 'Future matters'. By sharing its results, this paper aims to trigger more discussions on the en-riching roles material plays in post-anthropocentric design.