Nineteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

A new design area bond with new aims and principles is emerging, and multiple design terms come to identify it: social design, codesign, ecodesign, biodesign, biomimicry. They are committed to answering humanity’s more urgent needs. This paper expands their concept and actions to all aspects of life, rejecting practices that limit the design scope to creating consumer goods and artifacts. At the end of the Anthropocene era, we need to create an expanded vision of design theory and practice, which channels its capacity for creating worlds into ways of being and doing intensely in tune with justice and the Earth. Therefore, we propose to broaden this approach, aiming to understand non-human expertise better. It is a reaction to the established paradigm while acknowledging the design and education responsibility in compromising the planet’s future. We present the analyses of various practices (intra/interspecies interaction, holobionte, and holo(non)bionte examples) bond with new intrinsic aims: change, transformation, or innovation. They path new unconventional territories where humans understand and learn from and with Nature. We started with Freire’s cultural circles but amplified it based on the context of the natural world and the demands of those involved – Humanity and other Living Systems. In our conclusion, Nature became a partner, an educator that encoded and decoded the existential situations.