Abstract
With the development of More-than-Human-Centered Design theory, culture has gradually been recognized as an active non-human agent in urban public spaces, attracting increasing attention in the field of design research. However, in the actual planning and operation of urban spaces, posthuman cultural elements—such as cultural memory, historical narratives, and aesthetic experience—are often marginalized. Consequently, the functions of space have become increasingly shaped by mainstream social norms and efficiency-oriented logic, further reinforcing rigid divisions between age, behavior, and use. For example, in urban playgrounds, adults are often excluded and deprived of the right to emotional expression and cultural participation in public spaces. This study takes playfulness as an entry point to explore how non-human cultural agents can activate cultural agency in urban public spaces. Taking the Töölönlahti Park Playground in Helsinki, Finland, as the site of practice, this research explores how Locative Media Events (LMEs) can serve as a design strategy to reactivate hidden cultural memories and reconstruct adult playfulness in public spaces, responding to the rethinking of cultural agency in a posthuman context. The study integrates the theoretical perspectives of Participatory Urbanism and Relational Aesthetics and employs Design-Based Research (DBR) as its methodological framework. Through multiple iterative processes combining visual ethnography, co-creative prototyping, AI-based visual generation, and stakeholder interviews, the research underwent several rounds of experimentation and field validation. In the design practice, the research team proposed intervention prototypes such as luminous tracks and transformable abstract play objects. Feedback from interviews indicated that these design elements not only enhanced the site’s spatial and temporal accessibility but also effectively challenged the conventional notion that “play is only for children.” The study found that under non-instructive and low-threshold spatial mechanisms, adults exhibited a strong willingness to participate and explore, making play an important medium that connects history, art, and cultural memory. In this study, playfulness and other posthuman cultural elements are not only reactivated as non-human agents but also serve as design intervention points that balance relationships among historical heritage, environmental characteristics, and human behavioral mechanisms. This attempt provides a framework that integrates cultural expression and multi-species interaction in urban public space design, offering both theoretical and practical foundations for advancing inclusive, culturally sensitive, and posthuman-oriented design approaches.
Keywords
Posthumanism; Cultural Agency; More-than-Human-Centered Design; Participatory Urbanism; Playfulness
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.750
Citation
Jiang, Y.(2025) Reactivating the Unseen and Unheard: Posthuman Playfulness as Cultural Agency in Urban Ecologies, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.750
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 1 - More Than Human-centered Design
Reactivating the Unseen and Unheard: Posthuman Playfulness as Cultural Agency in Urban Ecologies
With the development of More-than-Human-Centered Design theory, culture has gradually been recognized as an active non-human agent in urban public spaces, attracting increasing attention in the field of design research. However, in the actual planning and operation of urban spaces, posthuman cultural elements—such as cultural memory, historical narratives, and aesthetic experience—are often marginalized. Consequently, the functions of space have become increasingly shaped by mainstream social norms and efficiency-oriented logic, further reinforcing rigid divisions between age, behavior, and use. For example, in urban playgrounds, adults are often excluded and deprived of the right to emotional expression and cultural participation in public spaces. This study takes playfulness as an entry point to explore how non-human cultural agents can activate cultural agency in urban public spaces. Taking the Töölönlahti Park Playground in Helsinki, Finland, as the site of practice, this research explores how Locative Media Events (LMEs) can serve as a design strategy to reactivate hidden cultural memories and reconstruct adult playfulness in public spaces, responding to the rethinking of cultural agency in a posthuman context. The study integrates the theoretical perspectives of Participatory Urbanism and Relational Aesthetics and employs Design-Based Research (DBR) as its methodological framework. Through multiple iterative processes combining visual ethnography, co-creative prototyping, AI-based visual generation, and stakeholder interviews, the research underwent several rounds of experimentation and field validation. In the design practice, the research team proposed intervention prototypes such as luminous tracks and transformable abstract play objects. Feedback from interviews indicated that these design elements not only enhanced the site’s spatial and temporal accessibility but also effectively challenged the conventional notion that “play is only for children.” The study found that under non-instructive and low-threshold spatial mechanisms, adults exhibited a strong willingness to participate and explore, making play an important medium that connects history, art, and cultural memory. In this study, playfulness and other posthuman cultural elements are not only reactivated as non-human agents but also serve as design intervention points that balance relationships among historical heritage, environmental characteristics, and human behavioral mechanisms. This attempt provides a framework that integrates cultural expression and multi-species interaction in urban public space design, offering both theoretical and practical foundations for advancing inclusive, culturally sensitive, and posthuman-oriented design approaches.