Abstract
This track brings together papers that explore more-than-human design practices that generate alternative, plural, situated, and relational approaches to climate futures through affect, aesthetics, and care. Framing climate crisis as a polycrisis of interconnected ecological, political, cultural, and epistemic conditions, the track foregrounds how designers are working across contradictory, incommensurable, and unevenly recognised and experienced impacts of climate change. The included papers examine how more-than-human design can attend to embodied, felt, and sensed worlds of multiple species and digital-material entities, infrastructures, and their environments. Across landscapes, waterscapes, governance, microbial growth, and multiple intelligences, the contributions reveal both the possibilities and frictions of designing as a critical transdisciplinary practice towards more equitable, regenerative, and care-full climate futures under conditions of polycrisis.
Keywords
emotion; transdisciplinary; regeneration; care; polycrisis; multi-scalar
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.188
Citation
Clarke, R.E., Westerlaken, M., Heitlinger, S., Poikolainen Rosén, A., and Choi, J.H. (2026) Designing More-than-Human Climate Futures: Affect, Aesthetics and Relational Practices, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.188
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Designing More-than-Human Climate Futures: Affect, Aesthetics and Relational Practices
This track brings together papers that explore more-than-human design practices that generate alternative, plural, situated, and relational approaches to climate futures through affect, aesthetics, and care. Framing climate crisis as a polycrisis of interconnected ecological, political, cultural, and epistemic conditions, the track foregrounds how designers are working across contradictory, incommensurable, and unevenly recognised and experienced impacts of climate change. The included papers examine how more-than-human design can attend to embodied, felt, and sensed worlds of multiple species and digital-material entities, infrastructures, and their environments. Across landscapes, waterscapes, governance, microbial growth, and multiple intelligences, the contributions reveal both the possibilities and frictions of designing as a critical transdisciplinary practice towards more equitable, regenerative, and care-full climate futures under conditions of polycrisis.