Design Beyond the Human

How can design shine a light on humanity’s relationship with the planet, its ecosystems, and inhabitants, both now and in the future?

Global challenges like climate change and ecosystem degradation are proving that a singular disciplinary approach is inadequate to respond to issues where societal behaviours, individual choices, political decisions, economic, technological, and scientific developments are so densely entangled—not least in design. But what happens when we turn things around and decentre “the human” to look at our relationship with the planet, its ecosystems, and inhabitants beyond the capitalist human-nature binary worldview?

Design Beyond the Human is a collection of essays by international scholars, designers, and engaged citizens traversing activism, anthropology, conservation, creative writing, design practice, design theory, economics, education, environmental humanities, ethics, history, indigenous knowledge, law, philosophy, poetry, politics, regenerative agriculture, science, sociology, and technology.

Divided into three sections—We Are Not Alone, Design Beyond the Human, and Mediating Human–Non-Human Relations Through Design—the text generates conversations capable of thinking about life on planet Earth, challenging the Anglo-European anthropocentric conceptualisation of design that dominates practice, education, and academic discourse. Each section is unique: charting the transdisciplinary cultural perspective that is required to comprehend our predicament, the critique of human-centred design and its interdependence with capitalism, and the nascent practices and projects that are attempting to reconcile humanity's possible relationship with the planet, its ecosystems, and inhabitants.

The book offers the reader an opportunity to engage with expertise, knowledge, methodologies, and lived experiences from across disciplines shaped by shared concerns, providing an opportunity to question if design in a more-than-human way might reimagine design’s relationship to capitalism and contemporary lifestyles. Will our planetary future be merely an ecologically aware version of today, or, in going beyond the human, might we develop a transdisciplinary perspective capable of imagining an alternative vision of life on Earth?