More-than-Human: Making with the Living World reframes design practice around a radical premise: that human needs are not the measure of good design, and that the living systems we depend on demand equal consideration in every act of making.
About This Book
Design has long operated as a discipline of human improvement — better homes, better cities, better products. More-than-Human dismantles that assumption. Edited by Justin McGuirk, this book gathers a new generation of designers, architects, and artists whose practices are oriented not toward human comfort alone but toward the flourishing of other species and living systems. Set against the backdrop of climate crisis and ecological collapse, it asks what more-than-human design actually looks like in practice — and what it demands of the people who make things. With critical essays from Anna Tsing, Tim Ingold, and Daisy Hildyard, the book moves between theory and making, between entanglement and agency, between the urgency of now and the longer rhythms of ecological time.
Key Features
- 240 pages of commissioned design projects, critical essays, and visual documentation of ecological practice
- Contributions by Anna Tsing, Tim Ingold, and Daisy Hildyard
- Published by Thames and Hudson, ISBN 9781872005867
What You'll Discover
- How designers, architects, and artists are reorienting their practices to account for the rights and needs of non-human species
- The philosophical stakes of more-than-human thinking, drawn from ecological theory, anthropology, and contemporary art
- What it means to design with living systems rather than upon them — and how that shift changes material, process, and intent
- How entanglement with ecosystems can function as a design methodology rather than simply a constraint
About the Author
Justin McGuirk is a writer and curator whose work sits at the intersection of design criticism, urbanism, and social practice. He has edited and contributed to major international design publications and exhibitions, and brings to this project a sustained critical interest in how design responds to global crises.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 30 x 24 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781872005867
- Publisher: Thames and Hudson
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, designers, and thinkers grappling with ecological responsibility in practice; students of design theory and environmental humanities; anyone interrogating what it means to make things in an age of climate crisis.