Abstract
This editorial introduces a set of emerging and consolidating practices in more-than-human design, situating them within a shifting landscape where coherence is not yet achieved—and may not be the goal. Rather than stabilizing the field, the contributions gathered in this meta-track move within an “ecology of practice” (Stengers) that remains attentive to frictions, partial connections, and unresolved tensions. Braiding both interrelated but also incoherent experiences, the authors of this panel work through relational agency, somatic literacy, and productive friction: outlining and reconfiguring design beyond human-centered paradigms. Across contexts—from biodesign and biodiverse architecture to embodied experiments with non-human perception—design is approached as a practice of entanglement rather than control. Yet the editorial itself remains implicated in the act of framing. What takes shape here might resist being gathered into a coherent new design language.
Keywords
More-than-humans, ecology of practices, designing-with, frictions
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.284
Citation
Popplow, L. (2026) Design and More-than-Human: Forming Ecologies of 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.2026.284
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Design and More-than-Human: Forming Ecologies of Practices
This editorial introduces a set of emerging and consolidating practices in more-than-human design, situating them within a shifting landscape where coherence is not yet achieved—and may not be the goal. Rather than stabilizing the field, the contributions gathered in this meta-track move within an “ecology of practice” (Stengers) that remains attentive to frictions, partial connections, and unresolved tensions. Braiding both interrelated but also incoherent experiences, the authors of this panel work through relational agency, somatic literacy, and productive friction: outlining and reconfiguring design beyond human-centered paradigms. Across contexts—from biodesign and biodiverse architecture to embodied experiments with non-human perception—design is approached as a practice of entanglement rather than control. Yet the editorial itself remains implicated in the act of framing. What takes shape here might resist being gathered into a coherent new design language.