Designing for Interdependence

The book’s greatest strength is its insistence that more-than human beings be taken seriously as co-habitants of human habitations. But instead of simply making the case for his thesis in words, the author has practiced and built experiments in creating interspecies co-habitations. In this original book, Ávila does not romanticize or demonize interspecies relations, but treats them with the nuance they deserve, giving due respect to the complexities of our relations, our attractions, our revulsions. -- Kriti Sharma, California Institute of Technology, USA This life-affirming book advances the field of design engaged with decentering humans and proposes a focus on designing for ecological interdependence. Ávila seamlessly converses between complex theoretical perspectives and concrete design practices. This results in a book that offers both profound reflections on designing relationally and in response to other entities as well as a rich repertoire of examples inspiring practitioners to attune to multispecies worlds. This work takes design in an exciting direction that offers plenty of possibilities to construct alternative futures. -- Michelle Westerlaken, University of Cambridge, UK In our climate emergency, it’s become a truism that we can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them. New thinking is desperately needed. In Martín Ávila’s Designing for Interdependence new concepts flourish. Rather than mere opposition to a human-centered design paradigm, Ávila care fully incorporates into design key ideas drawn from the field of biosemiotics and from the 'biocentric' turn of law and philosophy in Latin and South America. This is made tangible through examples as diverse as designs for urban bee habitats and for co-existing with scorpions. Avila’s propositions are welcome and urgent: we need to rethink design as a crucial form of relation to multiple ecologies and biodiversity. -- Ramia Mazé, University of the Arts London, UK