Emīlija Veselova is a design researcher and educator with a Master’s in collaborative design and a Doctor of Arts in design for sustainability. Originally from Latvia, she has lived in Finland and other Nordic countries for 15 years. Her expertise lies in collaborative design, engaging stakeholders like users, service providers, and citizens. Her curiosity about nature’s absence in design processes grew from her upbringing in a small town where she relied a lot on nature.
‘While designers strive to include all stakeholders, nature is often left out, despite the sustainability crisis. This led me to explore why, how, and which aspects of nature should have a seat at the table,’ says Emīlija.
In my work, more-than-human design is an approach in design in which we consider not only humans, but also other-than-human things, organisms and systems. This approach has many names, e.g., multispecies design, designing with nature, planet-centric design, nature-centric design, designing with nature, non-anthropocentric and eco-centric design. I prefer to use multispecies design and design with nature.
Traditionally, in design, we have considered users and other human stakeholders, like citizens, service providers and groups with special needs. We have also considered the impact of things like technology, the economic system, money, and laws and regulations. But nature has been a very neglected stakeholder. Nature has stakes in what we design and, more broadly, what we create and do in this world. So, designing with nature focuses on bringing nature into what we do, what we create, how we think and what we value.
Designing with nature is a growing approach, especially in urban planning. While cities are rich in biodiversity, planning decisions primarily reflect human needs. However, there is increasing interest in viewing cities as multispecies spaces. Urban planning is exploring ways to represent nature – animals, plants, insects, rivers, and even darkness – to reduce biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, and pollution.
Each day will include lecture time followed by discussions. We will cover theory, frameworks and practical insights from sustainability science, environmental ethics, environmental psychology, systems thinking, multispecies ethnographic research, and design. This theory will provide thinking models and expand students understanding of the role of nature in human lives and sustainability, how humans relate to nature, and why it is important to include and consider nature.
The course includes a lot of time for reflection: each day, students will complete a reflective log and, at the end of the course, develop a practical strategy for including nature in their own practice. This will build their internal learning capacity and deepen their work with their own values, perspectives and practice.
Students will learn practical tools and approaches – like systems mapping and making a nonhuman persona through short group assignments. Starting to include nature in design and other practices can be daunting, so the course provides an opportunity to learn base skills and tools for that in a safe, engaging and fun way. Sustainable design and designing with nature do not have to be daunting and stressful!
This course provides cutting-edge theory and practical tools for those who are interested in an academic or professional career related to sustainability. While this course focuses on design, the theories, tools, methods and reflective approaches will expand the students’ understanding of sustainability and their own role within it. The more-than-human approaches are emerging across disciplines, in the public sector and in companies. Lawyers, high-level policy-makers, city planners and leading design agencies are thinking about more-than-human and multispecies futures and current actions. This is an up-and-coming approach, and the students of this course, regardless if they are in design or other fields, have the opportunity to catch the wave early.
The application period for Designing with Nature for Sustainability is open until 31 May 2025.
Designing for spiders? Collaborating with plants? Creating sustainable socio-ecological systems? It is time to shift the focus from purely human-centric solutions towards a world where multispecies flourishing is possible.
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