Designing for Interdependence : A Poetics of Relating Paperback / softback

by Martin (Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Sweden) Avila

Part of the Designing in Dark Times series

Paperback / softback

Less than 10 available - usually despatched within 24 hours

Description

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 designâ€™s 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, MartÃn Ãvila 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, Ãvila pursues the work of caring for how our mattering through design can become constructive in creating more-than-human ecologies.