Abstract
This theme track builds on emerging research that foreground time as relational, situated, and plural, while examining how a shift towards more-than-human temporalities could reshape design practices, material engagements, and ethical responsibilities. The track proposes five areas of exploration: a) experimental representations of entangled temporalities; b) material transformations, geological formations, and temporal scales of planetary life; c) accounts on practices of noticing, attuning, and orchestrating more-than-human times; d) designerly ways of negotiating and coordinating rhythms; and e) etico-onto-epistemological reflections on time and design. The contributions engage these areas across contexts such as coastal ecologies, plant systems, and bio-based materials, framing more-than-human time as dynamic and often in tension with productivist paradigms. Collectively, they position design as a practice of temporal attunement and negotiation, fostering more reciprocal, care-driven, and ecologically grounded ways of engaging with the world.
Keywords
more-than-human time; material ecologies; sustainable design; temporal ontologies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.204
Citation
Pschetz, L., Oktay, G., Nisi, V., Zhou, J., Kosminsky, D., Koppel, K., Bell, F., Vones, K., and Ferreira, M. (2026) Temporalities of More-than-Human Design, 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.2026.204
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Temporalities of More-than-Human Design
This theme track builds on emerging research that foreground time as relational, situated, and plural, while examining how a shift towards more-than-human temporalities could reshape design practices, material engagements, and ethical responsibilities. The track proposes five areas of exploration: a) experimental representations of entangled temporalities; b) material transformations, geological formations, and temporal scales of planetary life; c) accounts on practices of noticing, attuning, and orchestrating more-than-human times; d) designerly ways of negotiating and coordinating rhythms; and e) etico-onto-epistemological reflections on time and design. The contributions engage these areas across contexts such as coastal ecologies, plant systems, and bio-based materials, framing more-than-human time as dynamic and often in tension with productivist paradigms. Collectively, they position design as a practice of temporal attunement and negotiation, fostering more reciprocal, care-driven, and ecologically grounded ways of engaging with the world.