Design and Nature: A Partnership by Kate Fletcher
Organised as a dialogue between nature and design, this book explores design ideas, opportunities, visions and practices through relating and uncovering experience of the natural world.
Presented as an edited collection of 25 wide-ranging short chapters, the book explores the possibility of new relations between design and nature, beyond human mastery and understandings of nature as resource and by calling into question the longstanding role for design as agent of capitalism. The book puts forward ways in which design can form partnerships with living species and examines designers capacities for direct experience, awe, integrated relationships and new ways of knowing. It covers:
New design ethics of care
Indigenous perspectives
Prototyping with nature
Methods for new design and nature relations
A history of design and nature
Animist beliefs
De-centering human-centered design
Understanding nature has power and agency
Design and Nature: A Partnership is a rich resource for designers who wish to learn to engage with sustainability from the ground up.