Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Grappling with the non-human is increasingly becoming a consuming human concern. Jolting design past anthropocentric outcomes demands a quixotic and confronting discourse for educators. This paper considers Graham Harman’s notion that “not all objects are equally real, but that they are equally objects” (Harman, The Quadruple Object, 2011 pp. 5). In this context, we explore design as layered conversations with and through objects as part of a choreographed ethical and moral exchange. We recognize the challenge for emergent designers/design students to consider ‘humans as objects’ positioned within an ecosystem of other actants. This way of approaching design demands a recalibration of ‘making-thinking’’ past human-centered design methods. As teachers, how we locate this conversation within a design education milieu presents a double bind. Firstly, the perception of design as intrinsically engaged in human to human conversations. And secondly, that design is practiced as solution focused and effective rather than harnessing the potential of seeing the human to human as located in a shared, interdependent, existence with the non-human. This paper takes the position that the human object resides amidst a plethora of other objects populating the universe, including the universe itself. One example of this turn is the New Zealand Government, in 2017, recognizing “Te Awa Tupua as an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, and all its physical and metaphysical elements.” Teaching design into the uncertain future of the Anthropocene will demand educators to engage in visionary and radical imaginary approaches.