Designing for Interdependence: A Poetics of Relating

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Challenging the dominant design paradigm that centres humanity in its practice, Designing for Interdependence puts forward an ecocentric mode of designing that privileges a harmonious relationship between all life forms that share our planet. This book is about the practice of designing and designs capacity to relate (or not) to beings of all kinds, human and others, in ways that are life-affirming. Sensitive to power differentials and the responsibility that this entails, Martn vila develops the notion of alter-natives, a concept that exposes the alterity of artificial things and the potential of these things to participate in the sustainment of natural environments. He proposes a design practice that encompasses humans, artificial things and other-than-human species in a 'poetics of relating', and provides methods that support the rewilding necessary for maintaining cultural and biological diversity and the stabilization of planetary dynamics. The book features real-life project case studies that illustrate some of the political-ecological implications of an ecocentric paradigm, which can help us to imagine alternative modes of relating to local environments and alternative modes of inter-species cohabitation. Avoiding dualistic thinking and the dichotomies harmful-benefit, construction-destruction, natural-artificial and life-death, vila pursues the work of caring for how our mattering through design can become constructive in creating more-than-human ecologies.

Reviews

The books greatest strength is its insistence that more-than human beings be taken seriously as co-habitants of human habitations. But instead of simply making the case for his thesis in words, the author has practiced and built experiments in creating interspecies co-habitations. In this original book, vila does not romanticize or demonize interspecies relations, but treats them with the nuance they deserve, giving due respect to the complexities of our relations, our attractions, our revulsions. -- Kriti Sharma, California Institute of Technology, USA
This life-affirming book advances the field of design engaged with decentering humans and proposes a focus on designing for ecological interdependence. vila seamlessly converses between complex theoretical perspectives and concrete design practices. This results in a book that offers both profound reflections on designing relationally and in response to other entities as well as a rich repertoire of examples inspiring practitioners to attune to multispecies worlds. This work takes design in an exciting direction that offers plenty of possibilities to construct alternative futures. -- Michelle Westerlaken, University of Cambridge, UK
In our climate emergency, its become a truism that we cant solve problems with the same thinking that created them. New thinking is desperately needed. In Martn vilas Designing for Interdependence new concepts flourish. Rather than mere opposition to a human-centered design paradigm, vila care fully incorporates into design key ideas drawn from the field of biosemiotics and from the 'biocentric' turn of law and philosophy in Latin and South America. This is made tangible through examples as diverse as designs for urban bee habitats and for co-existing with scorpions. Avilas propositions are welcome and urgent: we need to rethink design as a crucial form of relation to multiple ecologies and biodiversity. -- Ramia Maz, University of the Arts London, UK

Author Bio

Martn vila is a designer, researcher, and Professor of Design at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. Martns postdoctoral project Symbiotic Tactics (2013-2016) was the first of its kind to be financed by the Swedish Research Council. His research is design-driven and addresses forms of interspecies cohabitation.