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The Wednesday Journal of Cultural Insights.
Why has design traditionally focused only on the needs of humans, when we coexist alongside billions of animals, plants, and other living beings? This groundbreaking exhibition offers a new perspective, one that will be crucial to enabling the planet to thrive.
I visited the London Design Museum before attending Li Edelkoort’s trend talk, her first in London in over 6-7 years. It was also my first visit to this museum, and won’t be my last. More Than Human is the first major exhibition on a growing movement of ‘more-than-human’ design, presenting a new generation of international designers whose practices embrace the idea that human activities can only flourish alongside other species and systems. It is created in collaboration with Future Observatory, the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition.
Featuring art, design, architecture, and technology, this thought-provoking show will present visitors with radical ideas on how to design with — and better understand — the living world. By bringing together over 140 works spanning contemporary and traditional practices, fine art, product design, architecture, and interactive installations, the exhibition will explore how humans can relearn to design with and for the natural world in the face of the climate emergency.
For most of human history, we have designed in harmony with other species, sharing homes with farm animals or creating fish traps that allow young fish to escape. Industrialisation changed that. Designers today are relearning how to design with and for living systems.
But what does this involve? It means designing in ways that encourage biodiversity and the health of natural ecosystems – for example, creating architecture that hosts birds and insects. It means thinking beyond human needs. Some designers may work with living materials, like mycelium or bacteria, which means they cannot fully control the final outcome. Engaging with the living world is a deeper, more holistic approach to addressing the climate crisis than focusing solely on carbon emissions. Making with the living world fundamentally challenges the principles of design as we know it.
“The problem with the traditional human rights story is that we anointed ourselves as the sole citizens of the Earth and proclaimed all other beings as aliens with no rights.”
César Rodríguez-Garavito
Here are a few highlights:
This mural, created by Elena Landinez and César Rodríguez-Garavito, records the names of rivers that have been awarded legal rights by the countries through which they flow, as well as land surrounding waterways whose rights have been debated in court. These constitutional provisions, court rulings, and declarations safeguard the integrity of rivers and, by extension, the numerous species (including humans) that depend on them.
Eco Jurisprudence Monitor
“Between 2006 and 2024, more than 500 initiatives recognizing rights of nature – including constitutional provisions, laws, policy instruments, court decisions, and nonbinding declarations – have been pursued in 44 countries and international venues like the United Nations.”²
Please see a few excerpts captured on the mural:
These baskets were woven by members of the Ye ‘kuana people of the Venezuelan Amazon. Weaving baskets is central to Ye’kuana identity.
It is a ritual process that begins with songs, asking the rainforest’s permission to take the necessary materials for weaving. The Ye’kuana view baskets as sacred objects, essentially an extension of the natural world. They are often decorated with the animals of the forest. The types shown here, the small Jojo and the larger Wüwa, are only woven by women.
The Finnish pavilion, built for the Venice Biennale of Architecture, functions as a platform for environmental discourse, both in terms of its materiality and multisensory experience, as well as the various activities that take place there. It comprises a pollinator-friendly meadow, decaying wood, biochar, and clay structures designed in collaboration with ecology researchers and built through a participatory educational process to support the shared well-being of people, non-human animals, plants, and soil microbes. Alusta is realized by a multidisciplinary group led by architects Maiju Suomi and Elina Koivisto.
Alista Pavilion by Suomi/Koivisto Architects. Exhibition photography: Luke Hayes
If pollinators designed gardens, what would humans see?
Pollinator Pathmaker, created by the artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, is an artwork for pollinators, planted and cared for by humans. She shows a new tapestry that explores the perspectives of pollinators through the seasons.
‘I wanted to make art for pollinators, not about them. Pollinator Pathmaker is an ambitious art-led campaign to make living artworks for other species to enjoy. Can the audience for an artwork be more-than-human? And how can art be useful in the ecological crisis?’
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
ADG: To allow humans to visualise my Pollinator Pathmaker artworks before planting then, I digitally paint each species in the plant palettes in budding, blooming, and winter states. My visualisation tool then composites each plant in a particular scheme into a three-dimensional world that takes us through its seasons: a garden that humans can fly through and around as an insect might.
Julia Lohmann invites you to step into a council of seaweed – a gathering of species she collected in Europe and East Asia. Set within a soundscape of the rising and falling tide, this installation offers a new perspective on coastal ecosystems.
The enigmatic forms reveal seaweed’s properties and potential as a design material, inviting connection on a human scale.
If we consider that all living things have their own needs and agency, we might ask: What does seaweed think of us? How can we use this regenerative resource responsibly, meeting our own needs while learning to care for seaweed in return? Meet the Kelp Council hanging in a circle in the exhibit as if they were talking to each other.
The Microplanetary Rosette, a commissioned installation by Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation, is a wildlife-friendly façade sample made with pulverized cork and natural resin, featuring deep clefts and niches that support insulation while offering habitat for microorganisms, fungi, mosses, and insects. The porous structure accommodates bacteria and fungi colonies, designed to promote colonization and growth within its crevices, making the building an ecological host rather than just a surface.
It exemplifies a shift toward biocentric architecture, where buildings participate in mutual care with non‑human life, enhancing biodiversity, water resistance, and potentially carbon sequestration
Over the last 18 months, we have been watching something interesting happen in the way people search for new materials
Of all trade shows, festivals, exhibitions, Homo Faber is the one you need to experience in person. This was my
While reading Pablo Picasso’s autobiography, I found myself drawn not only to the artists of early twentieth-century Paris, but to
