Designing with and Beyond Humans: Opportunities in Earth Centered Design Education
Loading...
Date
2024-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Designing for sustainable futures involves considering a variety of new complex environmental challenges caused by global warming. To that extent, Earth-centered Design (Smith, 2019) proposes a shift in the way we learn and practice design, inviting more resilient, biodiverse and interconnected ways of understanding the world we design for and with. For instance, I am suggesting that by creating and deepening connection with indigenous communities (based on my own experiential knowledge), contextualizing earth-based ways of living (St. Pierre, 2015) and understanding plant consciousness (Pinchbeck & Rokhlin, 2019), Earth-centered Design offers a shift of mindset supporting a form of design practice that can sustain long-term life on earth. This research explores, through case studies, how indigenous, ancestral and earth based knowledge can be translated to enrich design teaching. Through such explorations I sought to provide resources to initiate conversations around new educational perspectives supporting design for resiliency. This research explores methods for bringing ritual into the classroom space, co-designing with plants, and creating opportunities for the reframing of core design principles through an indigenous-value lens. Those come together to generate possibilities of what curricula can look like in the context of an Earth-based Design education. The case studies presented in this research include ground work with the Ivy Pora Indigenous Community in Sao Paulo, Brazil; in which exchanges between the researcher and community included participating in territory hikes, learning from their teaching practices through storytelling, and facilitating a co-design workshop with the Guarani youth. It also includes Teachings from the BriBri Indigenous Community in Costa Rica in relation to their practices with the plant Cacao, which integrate ancestral storytelling, contemporary practices and reflections of the design process that exists within these practices. Finally, this research builds on the reflections and learnings from the communities mentioned and proposes new methods and applications of these pedagogies. I present pilot curriculum testing of educational Co-design and Ritual-based learning in sessions facilitated in both the OSU and larger Columbus Community. Overall these case studies raise new questions and discuss inspiring examples of Earth-Centered pedagogies, inviting design educators to envision Earth-based Design practice as part of the design school curriculum.
Description
The Arts: 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum)