Codesign multiespécies da horta Espaços Verdes na Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial

Abstract

This work investigates, through collective efforts in the Espaços Verdes (EV) garden at the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (ESDI/UERJ), how more-than-human beings contribute to the development of ecological, situated, and multispecies design. Between 2023 and 2024, the EV activities were monitored, in which humans and more-than-humans designed the garden. The goal is to understand how these multispecies relationships permeate the making of design and propose other ways of imagining and designing worlds. The dissertation proposes a writing process in the rhythms of the earth, in the seasons, in the unique time of each inhabitant. The writing engages with inhabitants and collective efforts, observations, and storytelling, to envision a design that converges with more-than-human beings. And drawing is being attentive, making people stop, making-with, composing and recomposing, engaging with hair in the deviations. The research draws on authors such as Pedro Biz, Pedro Themoteo, Barbara Szaniecki, Zoy Anastassakis, and Arturo Escobar, along with Nêgo Bispo, Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, Vinciane Despret, and Isabelle Stengers, to articulate questions of political ecology through collaborative practices of care. Design is understood as a relational practice, arising from the interdependence between species and the attention to territories. The dissertation is organized by seasons: the autumn of recognizing memory, the winter of sharing care, the spring of re-flowering encounters, and the summer of the happening in drawing. Each chapter metaphorically uses the characteristics of the seasons to reflect each stage of the research. The ESDI garden is cultivated for us to experiment and reflect on how to design with more-than-human beings. Thus, design does not come after life but alongside it. A place where design learns to be less project and more process, less form and more relationship.