Participatory Design for Multispecies Cohabitation

Abstract

This chapter addresses the environmental crisis by empowering voices and actions of non-human lifeforms in more-than-human design. This work is significant because dominant approaches to sustainability remain limited by the knowledge of human experts, resulting in exclusion, bias, and inadequate outcomes. Seeking to address this gap, the chapter extends existing theoretical work on more-than-human communities by providing conceptual framing, tools, and examples that can inform design action. To do this, it examines a degraded site that already attracts substantial restoration efforts and contributes to them by designing artificial structures that can support arboreal wildlife. The described workflow scans trees that serve as habitat structures, uses field observations in combination with artificial intelligence to predict bird behaviours, and deploys computation to generate innovative designs. This process reframes trees as designers, birds as clients, and humans as assistants. The evidence contributes to knowledge by demonstrating the potential and practicality of more-than-human participation.