1st Edition
Transpecies Design Design for a Posthumanist World
In May 2019, the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warned that human activities will drive nearly one million species to extinction in a few decades. The primary reasons for this are habitat loss and biodiversity demise caused by changing climate, pollution, introducing nonindigenous species, clearing land, and over population and consumption. Given this situation, humans must change course as both human wellbeing and the wellbeing of other-than-human species are imbricated in one another. One way humanity can accomplish the needed transformation is to move beyond an anthropocentric view of life by embracing a transpecies one that is premised upon interconnected flourishing.
Transpecies design, as outlined in this book, offers a new approach to regenerating the natural environment while honoring biodiversity. Rather than presenting the human experience as the goal of design, transpecies design takes the inextricable linkages connecting living things as both its starting point and end goal. As such, it moves beyond human experience serving as the fundamental ingredient for making better design processes and decisions.
This book is essential reading for designers and architects, as well as students of architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, art, product design, environmental philosophy, and cultural studies.
Part 1: Co-Habitation
1. How Does Ecological Science Support Transpecies Design?
Stewart Pickett
2. Interspecies, Multispecies, or Transpecies Design? What’s the Difference?
Adrian Parr
3. Transpecies Design and Biomimicry
Henry Dicks
4. Design Against Extinction: Multispecies Methods and Engineered Living Materials
Mitchell Joachim
5. Garden City to City in Nature: A Case for the Cohabitation of Tidal Ecologies along Singapore’s Urban Waterfront
Gabriel Tenaya Kaprielian
6. Floating-With: Buoyant Ecologies of Collaboration and Solidarity
Adam Marcus, Margaret Ikeda, and Evan Jones
7. Unbecoming Human: Patricia Picinini’s Bioart and Postanthropocentric Posthumanism
Kate Mondloch
8. Salt Formations
Rosalea Monacella
Part 2: Co-Creation
9. Origin and Evolution of Biodiversity: A Story of Life on Earth
Christian Sardet
10. Janet Laurence in Conversation
Adrian Parr
11. Birdsong and the Transpecies Aesthetic
David Rothenberg
12. Entangled Intelligences: Transpecies Dialogues of Art
Jiabao Li
13. Designing with Non-Humans: Ralph Ghoche interviews Joyce Hwang
Ralph Ghoche
14. The Problem is the Burning House
Catherine Page Harris
15. Everything with Wings
Sarah Walko and Gabriel Willow
16. Carla Bengston in Conversation
Adrian Parr
17. Piñon Passage
Nina Elder
Biography
Adrian Parr is the Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, UNESCO Chair of Water and Human Settlements, and a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. She is a philosopher, storyteller, and creative practitioner. She curated the Transpecies Design exhibition for the European Cultural Center’s, Space, Time, Existence 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale and the Watershed Urbanism exhibition for the for 2021 ECC Venice Architecture Biennale. Her documentaries and art films have received numerous awards at independent film festivals around the world. She has published extensively on environmental culture and politics and her most recent book publication Earthlings (Columbia UP, 2022) earned a silver medal at the 2023 Nautilus Books Awards (environment category). Other publications include the trilogy: Birth of a New Earth (Columbia 2017), The Wrath of Capital (Columbia 2012), and Hijacking Sustainability (MIT Press, 2009). She is the editor, with Santiago Zabala, of the Outspoken series published with McGill University Press.
Michael Zaretsky AIA, is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture in the College of Design at the University of Oregon. Zaretsky is a licensed architect with extensive experience in local and international design/build projects. His research is focused around culturally and environmentally responsive public interest design projects and community engagement with underserved communities locally and internationally. His published work includes Precedents in Zero-Energy Design: Architecture and Passive Design in the 2007 Solar Decathlon (Routledge Press, 2009) and New Directions in Sustainable Design, with Dr. Adrian Parr (Routledge Press, 2010). Zaretsky has articles published in several architectural journals and has presented at conferences around the world on Sustainability, Humanitarian Design, and Public Interest Design. His work is included in the 2018 book The Public Interest Design Education Guidebook edited by Bell and Abendroth. He is the Director of Design for the Roche Health Center in rural Tanzania, a project of Village Life Outreach Project. Roche Health Center is the first–ever permanent healthcare facility in this region. The Roche Health Center opened on April 1, 2011, and provides health care to as many as 20,000 villagers. The Roche Health Center was the winner of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Collaborative Practice Award in 2011 and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) Award for Creative Integration of Practice and Education in the Academy in 2011 for the Roche Health Center project.
