Abstract
This paper documents a research project that has taken place over five years in the Emily Carr Industrial Design program. Our aim was to uncover methods to connect designers with nature, and to gain insight into how understanding our interdependence might change the way that designers work and prioritize. The act of practicing design with more-than-humans has effectively challenged human-centred design and activated deeper awareness of the implications of our design work. Over 160 Industrial design students, and 6 faculty members have been re-learning our place in the world as dependent among, and interdependent with, all other forms of life. Our research affirms that this shift in worldview is accomplished through direct, visceral engagement with nature and forms of wildness that are found when we slow down and wander outside of our human-made environments. External guests, including our more-than-human partners, prompt designers to care, to reconsider daily rituals, to re-language and to tell new stories. This engagement opens pathways to a plurality of views and approaches, and seeds a shift in priorities. Recalibrating practices in this way illuminates human interconnection with animate and inanimate beings, highlighting our deep relationality and reliance on the natural world in everything we do. Several questions guide our research. How can design include the presence and voices of more-than-human beings in our processes? How can we establish the importance of more-than-human stakeholders in decision-making? What forms of pedagogy engage new learners? How do students re-interpret these teachings and show us new ways of knowing? How might this activate different approaches to design?
Keywords
Interdependence, Relationality, Multi-species, Post-Anthropocentric
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2021.0023
Citation
Camozzi, Z., St. Pierre, L.,and Falk, C.(2021) Activating Design for Biodiversity, in Leitão, R.M., Men, I., Noel, L-A., Lima, J., Meninato, T. (eds.), Pivot 2021: Dismantling/Reassembling, 22-23 July, Toronto, Canada. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2021.0023
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Activating Design for Biodiversity
This paper documents a research project that has taken place over five years in the Emily Carr Industrial Design program. Our aim was to uncover methods to connect designers with nature, and to gain insight into how understanding our interdependence might change the way that designers work and prioritize. The act of practicing design with more-than-humans has effectively challenged human-centred design and activated deeper awareness of the implications of our design work. Over 160 Industrial design students, and 6 faculty members have been re-learning our place in the world as dependent among, and interdependent with, all other forms of life. Our research affirms that this shift in worldview is accomplished through direct, visceral engagement with nature and forms of wildness that are found when we slow down and wander outside of our human-made environments. External guests, including our more-than-human partners, prompt designers to care, to reconsider daily rituals, to re-language and to tell new stories. This engagement opens pathways to a plurality of views and approaches, and seeds a shift in priorities. Recalibrating practices in this way illuminates human interconnection with animate and inanimate beings, highlighting our deep relationality and reliance on the natural world in everything we do. Several questions guide our research. How can design include the presence and voices of more-than-human beings in our processes? How can we establish the importance of more-than-human stakeholders in decision-making? What forms of pedagogy engage new learners? How do students re-interpret these teachings and show us new ways of knowing? How might this activate different approaches to design?