Interspecies Design

This is a note about 'interspecies design'.

Definition

We can characterize design practices as 'interspecies' design' when 1) more than one species participate in design activities and 2) more that one species use the outcomes of design.

One can argue that all forms of practically possible design will necessarily implicate multiple species. In that sense, all design is interspecies design.

Therefore, to make the notion of interspecies design useful as the label for a distinct cluster of practices we can choose to use this label only in application to design practices that intentionally involve or emphasize and seek to centre the involvement and contributions of multiple species as well as harms and benefits to species beyond humans.

[Interspecies design] is a form of design that seeks to involve and benefit both human and non-human lifeforms; to design for and with all life.

Roudavski, Stanislav. “Interspecies Design.” In Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene, edited by John Parham, 147–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Need

Need to conclude with the relevance for design.

Ethics is an open work.

Existing ideas in critical and post-colonial discourse point to the fact that it is impossible to avoid harm, domination, and oppression unless all those at risk are included into the process of making decisions. Who and how can be included is an open challenge. Also, what languages or tools can be used.

Synonyms and Antonyms

Forms and Versions

multispecies design
more-than-human design
ecocentric design, different because 'interspecies design':
- prioritizes the process while 'ecocentric design' focuses on goals
- focuses on life while 'ecocentric design' considers ecosystems that consist of situated living and nonliving entities
respectful design

Parallel Concepts

symbiotic design
reconciliation ecology: “the modification of anthropogenic systems to support biodiversity without compromising direct use”1

More-than-Human Design

Designing with and for nonhumans as well as humans.

Santos, Rodrigo dos, Michelle Kaczmarek, Saguna Shankar, and Lisa P. Nathan. ‘Who Are We Listening to? The Inclusion of Other-than-Human Participants in Design’. In LIMITS ’21: Workshop on Computing within Limits, 2021. https://doi.org/10/gkdd7f.

Rice, Louis. ‘Nonhumans in Participatory Design’. CoDesign 14, no. 3 (2018): 238–57. https://doi.org/10/gfvpfx.

Veselova, Emīlija, and а İdil Gaziulusoy. ‘Implications of the Bioinclusive Ethic on Collaborative and Participatory Design’. The Design Journal 22, no. sup1 (2019): 1571–86. https://doi.org/10/f9p9.

Linden, Dirk van der. ‘Interspecies Information Systems’. Requirements Engineering, 2021. https://doi.org/10/gmmvps.

Distinctive Characteristics

Establish a clear difference between sustainable design (Papanek, Ursula Tischner for early examples) and interspecies design or more-than-human design or better still explain that this is its natural development.

Vale, Brenda, and Robert Vale, eds. Green Architecture: Design for a Sustainable Future. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Szokolay, Steven V. Introduction to Architectural Science: The Basis of Sustainable Design. 2nd ed. 2004. Reprint, Amsterdam: Architectural Press, 2008.

McLennan, Jason F. The Philosophy of Sustainable Design: The Future of Architecture. Portland: Ecotone, 2004.

In deadwood increasingly used in European countries

Difficulties and Limitations

What is not interspecies design?
Why focus on species and not other taxa, or individual organisms, or communities and ecosystems?

Cases

This is the content that extends our article on the AI and visual abstraction.

This snippet discusses the relationship between subjectivity and — therefore — interpretation in nonhuman life, humans, and technology.

This is an elaboration of the following definition of abstraction.

Abstraction is a process that reduces the amount of information in a representation about an observable phenomenon to emphasize aspects that are relevant for a subjective purpose. In information-theoretical terms it is a form of lossy compression and occurs in human, animal and artificial forms of intelligence.

The subjective purposes for arboreal wildlife are to find and use liveable habitat-structures. For example, the purpose of birds is to perch and nest. The subjectivity of birds is the mechanism that allows them to recognize structures using their physiological, sensory and cognitive abilities. Artificial habitat structures must be objectively and subjectively adequate to birds. This purpose is subjective in that it is different for species and individuals who might have similar or contrasting needs, capabilities, and preferences.
The subjective purpose for human designers is to satisfy birds as clients in the conditions of incomplete understanding about ecosystem interactions and many other constrains such constructability and costs.
Observable phenomena that are available for the analysis by human designers are habitat structures such as large old trees and patterns of habitation including perching and nesting behaviours of birds. The observation techniques include data-driven and direct observation methods.
From this, human designers can derive the purpose for the AI agent. In our case, it is to produce shapes that preserve key features of tree geometries that populate the training dataset. The AI agent extracts these features through for the process of reduction. This reduction needs to be meaningful and beneficial within ecological and design domains.

See this for some examples to compare with:

MoMA Magazine: Built Ecologies

References and Bibliography