2

NOTES ON MORE-THAN-HUMAN
ARCHITECTURE
Stanislav Roudavski

Introduction
What can the creation of artificial habitats to replace old-growth forests tell us about the pro-
cess, value and future of design? This chapter takes a concrete and provocative example and
demonstrates its implications for modest, engaged and imperfect processes, which, it is argued,
call for the rethinking of design as a gradual, ecological action. To illustrate this understand-
ing, the chapter begins with a description of a proposal to provide artificial habitats for wild
animals. The action of designing these habitats, which includes replacing rapidly disappear-
ing old-growth trees with artificial structures, puts in doubt habitual assumptions about the
clients, procedures and goals of design. This example is of relevance to all design for at least
two reasons. First, because the task of providing artificial habitats to nonhuman forms of life is
going to become increasingly common as the environment requires more management under
the influence of such phenomena as global warming or urbanisation. And second, because all
design necessarily impinges on existing ecosystems and should aim to benefit nonhuman as
well as human stakeholders.
The creation of artificial structures in place of natural habitats is described in this chapter as
an incitement that highlights the need for further collaboration, for the integration of existing
knowledge and for new research. With the resulting questions in hand, the chapter proposes
the need for practice-oriented reconsiderations of values, participants and methods of design.
It concludes with a proposal for an attitude of modesty in the face of the overwhelming
(available and incoming) information as well as in the presence of an even greater and some-
times unbridgeable ignorance induced by interactions with nondeterministic, volatile and
incompletely controllable natural systems (Merchant, 2016). The dilemma of design in these
conditions is in the tension between its remit to act, and act now, and the uncertainty that
inescapably underlies any purposeful change and any creative endeavour.

Design challenges
This chapter argues that design encounters one important and insufficiently understood chal-
lenge: the need to design for all biosphere, for all life, within ecosystems. To illustrate this
challenge, this section refers to an approach that proposes to design artificial habitats for
 Notes on more-than-human architecture  25

nonhuman clients that live in the trees. This type of project is a largely uncharted ground,
where the very actors, such as trees, are “not easily defined or at least are definable in many
different ways.” (Hallé et al., 1978, p. 1) Therefore, the purpose here is not to share ready reci-
pes or advocate for best practices but, instead, to challenge habitual approaches to design so
that they could be reconsidered from first principles.

* * *

When large trees are lost – to harvesting, agriculture, safety concerns in urban environments
or other causes – tree-dwelling animals such as birds, bats and insects lose their habitats and the
local ecosystem disintegrates.The planting of new trees to replace the old ones does not resolve
the problem because the young trees cannot provide appropriate conditions (Gibbons and
Lindenmayer, 2002; Le Roux et al., 2015). Large trees take hundreds of years to mature and
develop adequate habitat features such as large canopies, cavities, fallen branches and peeling
bark.The combined effect of such features makes large old trees function as biodiversity hotspots
or ‘keystone structures’ in the surrounding ecosystems (Manning et al., 2006).The tree example
is far from unique. On the contrary, the presence of suitable physical structures is important to
many forms of life in a broad variety of situations. For example, wetlands (Tews et al., 2004) and
reefs (Kerry and Bellwood, 2015) also act as keystone structures in their ecosystems.
When a large old tree is gone, a replacement for it might be provided artificially. Provision
of artificial habitats has been attempted in marine environments, for example, in the case of
artificial reefs (Baine, 2001) and in other marine structures built as ecological habitats (Bulleri
and Chapman, 2015) including artificial shorelines (Browne and Chapman, 2011), fish aggre-
gation devices and artificial seagrasses. More recently, this approach has been attempted in the
work of Le Roux for the Australian Capital Territory’s Parks and Conservation Service, with
artificially constructed props or reused dead trees. It is likely that such artificial replacements
of natural structures will be increasingly necessary, or at least conceivable, as viable tactics in
the challenge of managing environments. Artificial objects can and already do support many
species and should be taken into account in the work of conservation, regeneration and man-
agement of novel ecosystems. Such incorporation will require further research on how such
structures impact the environment and relate to the functioning of human societies.
The job of providing habitat structures is familiar to architects whose profession is expressly
dedicated to the regulation of dwelling, typically through physical structures. However, the
established architectural-design practices focus on human needs and judge designs according
to human criteria for success. If this anthropocentric focus is abandoned, the goal of facili-
tating habitation for all life emerges as a logical broadening of existing architectural work.
However, the implementation of such broadening is far from trivial and requires further
theorisation and practical experimentation.

Design contributions
It is increasingly recognised that “being mindful of all those who have or may have an inter-
est in valuing what has already been created” is “far more important” than creativity. (Sless,
2012) Consequently, the challenges of design that integrates into ecosystems are already taken
up by a range of disciplines including ecology and engineering. The names of relevant sub-
fields proliferate: environmental engineering, biotechnology, ecotechniques, cleaner technol-
ogy, industrial ecology, synthetic ecology, biomanipulation, restoration ecology, river and lake
26  Stanislav Roudavski

restoration, bioengineering, wetland restoration, sustainable agroecology, reclamation ecology,

habitat reconstruction, nature engineering, ecohydrology, ecotechnology, ecosystem reha-
bilitation, engineering ecology, biospherics, solar aquatics. And yet, as the specialists readily
acknowledge, the productive communication between disciplines predominantly responsible
for understanding (such as ecology) and those mostly responsible for action (such as engineer-
ing) is insufficient (Mitsch, 2014). In these conditions, what can design disciplines proper, such
as architecture, contribute in addition to the scientific and technical work already under way?

* * *

From corporate skyscrapers in the desert to sport cars on public roads and throw-away smart-
phones, design can be seen as an exuberant expression of consumerist excesses. Understood as
such, design is a practice to overcome, with time and at a cost, like fossil-fuel energy sources or
plastic bags in supermarkets. It is a burden for the ecology, what Ingersoll calls “building against
nature” (2012, p. 574), and Tonkinwise proposes to design out of existence (2014, p. 198).
This chapter takes a contrasting standpoint that sees design as (first) an unavoidable and
(second) a potentially useful set of practices. This optimistic appreciation dissociates design
from the making of desirable products and, instead, sees it as a practice that investigates the
unknown by sampling possible future states. This understanding is concerned with situations
where the path from the existing conditions to a preferred future state is not known; if the
necessary steps are clear, designing is not required. This type of designing occurs in many
existing fields, such as those already mentioned above. For example, many aspects of scientific
work require designing but the primary emphasis in physical, natural or social sciences is on
the study of the existing world. Where such studies focus on a proposal for the future, for
example in many subfields of engineering, the scientific methods become supplanted by or
complimented by those typical for design.
This understanding is an effort to abandon associations of design with fussy cleverness
that creates a world where everything is overdesigned, or exclusivity that helps to sell luxury.
By contrast, design can mean “designing of nothing” (Fry, 2008, p. 71) and this chapter high-
lights the outcomes of design that are to do with systemic changes rather than with material
objects. For example, a prosthetic habitat might be valued as an object but its primary pur-
pose is to bridge a gap in a habitable world left by a felled large old tree, ideally disappearing
after the job is done or, at least withdrawing into a modest, supporting role. In this case, the
outcome is a self-supporting autonomy of an ecosystem. Design can also mean metadesign
(e.g., see Wood, 2007), understood as a mode of politics that seeks to go beyond that which
is commonly thought possible. This attitude might choose to create an artificial habitat that
is deliberately provocative, not to achieve a desirable commodity but, instead, to solicit an
informative response or campaign for attention and care. The outcome of such design might
be intentionally grotesque, morally questionable and, sometimes, not fully functional, only
imagined and or even impossible.

Design values
The reorientation of design from commodities, conveniences, prestige and associated mar-
keting towards moral issues: choice, constraints, sharing, fairness or justice necessitates an
engagement with values, a kind of design-philosophical experimentation. The purpose of
 Notes on more-than-human architecture  27

such experimentation has to be stretch-testing or replacement of the familiar concept in the

actual field conditions of today, and – more importantly – of tomorrow.
To illustrate, the idea of ‘nature’ is one of such concepts, obviously central to the above
challenge of providing artificial replacements habitats.Yet, “[r]estoration of wild places in the
Anthropocene depends on valuing multiple forms of wildness, including novel anthropogenic
forms that have yet to be imagined.” (Cantrell et al., 2017) As Fry remarks (Fry, 2012, p. Part
II.6.Passing Figures of Technology), “ ‘we’ now exist in two kinds of intertwining ‘natures’: the
biological and the technological. Both ‘natures’ are governed by specific but inherently inter-
nal processes (over which ‘we’ have very limited and diminishing control).”This diminishment
of control stems from the intrinsically unpredictable behaviour of such complex systems as
societies, technologies or nature. In itself, humans’ inability to attain full control is not positive
or negative. It can be experienced as a form of liberation from the drive to some all-unifying
approach but can also be threatening with impending large-scale disasters such as those that
might be triggered by continuing global warming. In these conditions of limited control, it
is necessary to move from mechanistic accounts of the environment to a consideration of its
ongoing autopoiesis in the context of extended hybrid communities.The reframing of design
practices that is necessary for this move will shift attention from human-centred design to
more open-ended goals that will imply rethinking the very composition of the world and can
thus be described as ‘ontological design.’
Given that all technology emerges through design, it is also useful to acknowledge that enti-
ties created through designing exert influence in ways that extend well beyond specifications
imposed by design briefs. As evidenced by recent trends, for example those that emphasise
strategic design or social innovation, the common view that the primary role of designers is
to solve local problems for concrete clients is already becoming less influential. For example,
Sanders and Stappers (2012) re-describe designers as user-centred creators informed by ethno-
graphic research. However, ergonomic and human-centred forms of design that seek to focus
on ‘users’ can also lead to the negative effect of defuturing (a depletion of future options and
shortening of the future life), for example when they are employed as agents of consumerism
(Fry, 2008, p. 53, 54). As will be discussed below, who or what can be counted as a user is open
to questioning; along with what might constitute legitimate, desirable or sustainable ‘use.’ In
the context of ecological relationships, the very concept of ‘use’ appears to be suggestive of
outdated, exploitative attitudes towards the environment.To move beyond understandings that
are confined by such instrumentalist interpretations or by existing political and economic para-
digms, designing needs to be reconsidered, for example, as an elemental, ontological practice
(cf. “ontological design,” (Willis, 2007), behaviour-steering technology (Jelsma, 2000), transfor-
mation design (Burns et al., 2006) or persuasive technology (captology) (Fogg, 2003)).
What are the key concepts relevant to an ontological practice that aims to imagine cross-
species habitats? For example, are characteristics typically applied to ecosystems, such as bio-
diversity, useful in this regard? As it is evident from recent overviews (Garson et al., 2017),
concepts such as this are still in active negotiation. Multiple definitions of biodiversity coexist.
There are parallel applications of this concept across scales such as genes, organisms, species or
ecosystems. Its pragmatic effects on conservation are often driven by human preferences for
valuing some charismatic forms of life, such as elephants, more than others, such as microbes,
or viruses, or genetically modified organisms. To provide an alternative example, some of the
more recent approaches understand rewilding as a measure of human-independent auton-
omy that can be sustained by the artificially composed ecological systems that might be
28  Stanislav Roudavski

appropriate, for example, for the increasingly abandoned agricultural land (Cordell et al.,2005;
Corlett, 2016). These concepts seem to suggest that the ideal replacement tree should be
ephemeral: temporarily present, dissemblable/decomposable or, even if it is harder to imagine:
autonomously mobile, energy independent and self-repairing.
Diversity is commonly used as a generic characteristic or ‘natural way’ but resolving it into
a set of design principles is far from straightforward. Nature is typically admired in contem-
porary design circles because it “produces maximum effect with minimum means” (Kolarevic
and Klinger, 2008, p. 10). Yet, the idea that ecologies are finely balanced or wasteless is “bad
poetic science” (Dawkins, 1998). As a category, ‘waste’ is of course a human invention and an
expression of human values. Still, if some can see nature as wasteless, others may point out that
nature is wasteful in many ways. For example, it is wasteful of energy as only a small portion
of incoming solar radiation is used by life and living organisms dissipate energy constantly;
nature is wasteful of individual lives, with survivors often only making it by chance; and nature
is wasteful of innovation because local discoveries are eliminated by natural selection in the
periods when the environment does not change significantly and in the process, most of the
innovations are lost.
In these conditions, how should diversity be valued? As a unique, as-found, snapshot of
long and unique historical accumulation? This attitude presumes that the historical processes
that led to the current state can be arrested, which does not appear to be the case. If diversity
is to be valued as an effect of the underlying processes (e.g., selection, drift, speciation and
dispersal at the level of community ecology (Vellend, 2010)) it needs to be accepted that it
comes coupled with other phenomena such as blind opportunism or indifference to human
concerns. In this context, what happens to recognisable human criteria and values such as
comfort, safety, reliability or efficiency? In a field with other actors and values, what new
guidelines and criteria are needed or even possible?
How can foundational concepts be utilised to generate the practical criteria for design?
For example, is biodiversity measurable? Can these measurements be standardised and made
simple enough to operate in the context of a design project? Existing strategies for habitat
restoration recommend that each project should start with an establishment of a goal state.
The desired characteristics for such a habitat are often a compromise between the states of
indigenous landscapes and other interests, such as agriculture. However, most landscapes have
been affected by human actions for thousands of years. Many living forms depend on environ-
ments affected by humans and some might have evolved within them.This interdependence is
especially prescient in the contemporary conditions where most living organisms, at least on
land, have to live among artificial structures such as roads, dams, buildings and so on (Cronon,
1996 [1995]; Low, 2017 [2002]; McKibben, 2003 [1989]; Wapner, 2010). If the return to the
pre-human state is impossible or not desirable, what are the suitable criteria for alternative
goal states?
In the case of artificial replacements for old large trees, the resulting landscape can be
directed to very distinct visions. In principle, one can aim to actively maintain a model of
“wilderness” that conforms to the biodiversity found in historical records or in less disturbed
pockets of bush. However, in many cases this is no longer possible, for example in the cases of
commercial forests intended for harvesting or in fragmented landscapes. In spite of this, the
idea of artificial replacements for trees is met by intuitive repulsion and scepticism by many
unprepared people. For them, a confirmation that such trees are only intended as a tempo-
rary prop that supports animal life until the natural trees are large enough is a necessary (but
 Notes on more-than-human architecture  29

not necessarily sufficient) justification. However, in many environments, the large trees are
not coming back. In addition, even in the environments where they might return, introduc-
tion of artificial structures specifically designed to provide ‘modern conveniences’ to animals
might result in new preferences and dependencies that will make a return to natural trees
difficult or impossible. Dependencies on anthropogenic environments are now common for
many species, including those listed as endangered. Examples include barn swallows, spar-
rows, urban foxes and many other animals that prefer habitats modified by humans to wilder
places even if these environments have not been constructed with these animals’ needs in
mind (Low, 2017 [2002]). Thus, introduction of artificial replacements, especially at scale,
can shift an existing environment to a substantially altered state and potentially result in a
cascade of hard-to-predict effects. A design impulse towards ‘nature’ might lead to another
form of complex artifice.

Design participants
Acceptance of the responsibility for anthropocentrism’s pervasive environmental impacts can
arrive through the understanding of how the concept of human was invented. The relevant
discourse on post-humanism, and its objective of “going beyond humanism’s limit(ations)”
(Fry, 2011, p. 245), is well established and design practices can benefit from rethinking their
objectives and methods to take this into account.
One way to approach this rethinking is though studies of the roles technology plays in
human performance and the suggestion here is that such studies can productively move from
the invention and appraisal of tools to the analysis of humans enmeshed in technological
ecologies. To illustrate, such analyses can vary from in-depth observations of how meaning
emerges in low-level material interactions (Jahn et al., 2014), to utilisation of ‘living’ models,
as discussed in a precursor to this article (Roudavski and Jahn, 2016), to broad considerations
now attempted in ‘software studies’ (e.g., Bratton, 2015).
Another way to shift the attention from the stereotypically understood human stakehold-
ers is through the deliberate inclusion of more-than-human entities. However, the rationale
for such inclusion and the procedures through which participation can be undertaken are far
from settled. Identity and agency of such participants cannot be taken for granted and modes
of communication with such entities are far from obvious. The processes of negotiation that
can account for diverging tendencies of human and other stakeholders are not yet available
and call for substantial further work in philosophy, politics and ethics as well as in design.
What can be counted as an actor is open to interpretation leading to frameworks discussed
as ‘flat’ or ‘weak’ ontologies. In the context of design, who or what are the legitimate or simply
meaningful ‘clients’? Should client representation resolve itself at the level of genes, organisms,
superorganisms, species, biomes or other possible structures? Should such clients be living,
semi-living or defined in some other manner? To illustrate, traditionally, architects and biolo-
gists considered structures as objects and functions as processes. The increasingly influential
alternative view (Odling-Smee and Turner, 2011) regards living structures as processes. For
example, habitats created or modified by animals can be seen as constructed ecological niches
(Odling-Smee et al., 2003) or physiological extensions of animals’ organisms (Turner, 2000).
Consequently, human architecture can also be seen as living (Turner and Soar, 2008). In a
contrasting move, human beings can be seen not as primarily biological entities but as actors
that are designed and constructed through the cultural use of technology (Fry, 2012). In the
30  Stanislav Roudavski

time when rivers can obtain legal personhood and the requisite rights (Hutchison, 2014): who
are the makers? Who sits in judgement? Who stands to benefit?
When understanding a template habitat structure, such as an old large tree, that a newly
designed artificial object is to replicate, what characteristics are important? Height, girth,
crown spread, trunk and branch volume, canopy structure, canopy volume, and overall tree
shape can be considered, as is typical when measuring large trees for record books. These can
be complemented with the information on the functional affordances such as numbers and
types of nesting and perching sites as well as the information on the typical inhabitants such
as birds, invertebrates or fungi.
Who (how and when) can collect or provide such information? Comprehensive infor-
mation is not available and the amount of information to describe a habitat such as an old
large tree can be overwhelming. Existing information tends to come from sources that have
compiled the records for specific goals, for specific groups of organisms, specific geographic
locations and via a variety of methods that produce hard-to-merge datasets.Theoretical biolo-
gists might study how formal fractal systems can describe botanical structures, preservation
societies are interested in listing all old trees and finding record-holding champions, ecologists
might evaluate reliance of one threatened species on the density of suitable hollows. Estab-
lished architectural types and typical architectural procurement and vetting methods need to
be extended so that this disparate knowledge can more readily inform architectural design and
be translated into concrete proposals for action.
In the case of artificial replacements for large old trees, the argument for the preserva-
tion of biodiversity is generated by the ecology experts. Governments might be supporting
similar goals, for example through biodiversity offsets, a scheme that seeks to compensate for
habitat losses caused by economic development, such as new construction or wood harvest-
ing. Advocates for biodiversity argue that the “aim to protect the ecological values of existing
and future urban areas, as well as adjoining habitat such as peri-urban nature reserves, should
be articulated during the planning phase and carried through the full development process.”
(Ikin et al., 2015, p. 207) However, where ecosystems have been already radically altered,
where the balance is severely skewed or where some of the ecosystem members are unwanted
by humans, framing the problem as preservation might be misleading and the actual challenge
is the establishment of some novel state. To differing degrees, this problem is typical, given
that no ecosystem on the planet can now be classed as unaffected by human activities. Thus,
even if a commitment to “ecological values” is achieved at the planning stage, the problem of
design remains, as is evidenced by the diversity of possible designs occurring within the con-
fines of comparatively more mature architectural or urban-planning guidelines. Furthermore,
innovative design often helps to determine what is possible and desirable in planning. Thus,
innovation, across all aspects of design including stakeholder inclusion, processes and out-
comes is needed even if the overall goal is to be modest. The challenge of designing artificial
habitats such as synthetic replacements for large old trees can be very controversial, especially
if the resulting structures are large and numerous. Therefore, the appropriate design approach
will have to focus on the challenges of building visions of the future supported by persuasive
narratives as well as on the generation of engineering solutions. The appropriate practices fall
under the rubric of participatory design. However, the human imagination and innovation
alone will not suffice when the benefits are to be shared by all life and this challenge takes
form of expanding contemporary understandings of participatory design to become more
radically inclusive, from the design for nonhumans to the design with them.
 Notes on more-than-human architecture  31

Design methods
“It is difficult, either for an individual or a society, to plunge full speed ahead into the future
while braking to keep pace with a biological past.” (Gunter, 1985, p. 107) Indeed, the recog-
nition that practical design necessarily participates in ontological-design processes invites an
abandonment of the concept of creativity understood as an agency directed from within a
human creator and out into the world. At the moment, even the inclusive interpretations that
make an effort to emphasise the distributed character of creativity and acknowledge the ever-
present involvement of heterogeneous agents, including nonhumans, focus on modifications
introduced into the environment rather than on the inevitable simultaneous destruction of
prior conditions.Yet, this necessary characteristic of creativity is important in a world where
impossible-to-replace and emergent conditions, such as cultural or biological diversities, are
being diminished with increasing speed and replaced with intentional human creations. In
response to this conceptual omission, this chapter suggests a shift from the notion of crea-
tivity as the process of addition to its interpretation as the process of restructuring, or – in
other words – a shift from creativity as an ingenious human ‘making’ to more modest meta-
phors that emphasise continuity of the world’s processes, such as metamorphosis, or evolution.
This alternative way of seeing can adjust the orientation of design practice by exposing the
need for methods that have the ability to transform whole networks of habits and routines
(Bourdieu, 1990).
In the available world, all making is necessarily prefigured by the already-existing context
that one can choose to emphasise as nature, modified nature, artificial entities experienced as
natural or artificial entities that are unmistakably artificial. A complete understanding of this
complex mix is not yet available. Given the constant change and the inherent unpredictability
of the multifaceted systems at play, such an understanding is also impossible.
This realisation, then, suggests a deliberate position of what Sadar calls “age-old virtues:
humility, modesty and accountability” (Sardar, 2010, p. 442). The current societal and envi-
ronmental conditions have been described as a transition into post-normal times where estab-
lished systems are coming under pressure (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993; Montuori, 2011;
Sardar, 2010). This uncertainty is further amplified for designers whose specialisation is to do
with inherently wicked problems where the resources are incomplete but the decisions are
expected. These designers are unavoidably constrained by the human mind’s excessive love
for meaningfulness and certainty (Burton, 2008) making generation and the acceptance of
adequate proposals more difficult. In these conditions, a deliberately modest attitude frames
research as a necessary and permanent part of design intended to reduce ignorance rather than
to produce knowledge (Wagner, 1993) and resulting in the “ignorance-based worldview”
(Vitek and Jackson, 2008), that emphasises the limits to human knowledge and human control
while cautioning against short-term action, as the foundation for design.
Such a worldview can foreground the understanding of design as activities of redirection
rather than an inherently creative or innovative endeavour. Amid such activities, designers
assume the role of mediators responsible for exchanges between multiple stakeholders, human
and nonhuman, natural and artificial, living and non-living.
This shift in attitude can be characterised as a turn towards opportunism: from pre-planning
to ambiguity where decisions are made in the process of making, in the context of actual sites
and in response to available information; from central control to local diversity where deci-
sions are responsive to changing contexts; and from performance thresholds to adaptability
32  Stanislav Roudavski

where decisions are made in response to incoming information about the environment and
the effects of past actions. To enable such a turn, architectural design and construction work-
flows need means to observe the dynamic behaviours of host systems, understand relation-
ships within these systems and trigger on-demand, local actions.
The focus on modesty and the acceptance of imperfection are the basic premises of
conservatism. Yet, conservatism, that is also about preferring familiar to the unfamiliar, is a
direction without the tools to answer the key question: how can one behave modestly in post-
normal times where radical change is inevitable and the familiar is unsustainable?
What types of structures might be used to produce artificial habitats? Depending on what
is selected as important design criteria, the results might look very different. For example,
artificial reefs are often made from scuttled ships, tyres or even old tanks and airplanes.While
this approach might be functionally adequate, from a standpoint of an architectural designer
it looks like a missed opportunity, potentially leading to culturally unsustainable structures,
even if under water, but especially on land. Existing resistance to the erection of such con-
structions as wind turbines demonstrates what might happen. The space of possible struc-
tures remains largely unexplored. Artificial trees might attempt to resemble their biological
prototypes as closely as possible or appear very different from them while providing some of
the desired affordances. As in many situations, it is likely that artificially constructed habitats
can be made more economical, impactful and culturally acceptable if biomimicry approaches
are combined with technological innovations. This challenge stands out as an opportunity
for design disciplines with their emphasis on open-ended practical experimentation, their
awareness of the wide spectrum of possibilities, for example in regard to geometric and
structural arrangements, and their proficiency in working with disparate datasets, stakehold-
ers and values.
Connected with the above, the design and making processes that lead to the construction
of artificial habitat structures such as large old trees can be based on human imagination or
generate unusual structures semi-automatically, in response to criteria and constraints. Data-
driven, performance-oriented, algorithmic and computational approaches are interesting in
this regard because they have the capacity to distance human designers from design outcomes
providing a conceptual space for splicing in other creative influences. A nonhuman stake-
holder such as a bird or a marsupial cannot be asked directly about their habitat preferences, at
least not in English (or in, say, Woiwurrung). The challenge of including their voices into the
design process requires innovative approaches based on observational data.
How can such structures be built, used and decommissioned? Artificial replacements for
real trees might be useful because they are quick to construct. This is their main, but not only,
potential advantage over naturally grown trees. However, as a result, they cannot grow and
decompose in the same way that natural structures do and thus require considered strategies
for production, assembly, modification, disassembly, reuse and recycling. The establishment of
guidelines for longevity, location and prominence of artificial structures existing as prosthetic
but functional members of ecosystems, as well as cultural artefacts, is a separate challenge with
unobvious criteria for success or risk management.
What is the feasibility of artificial habitat replacements? How should the value and risk
of such projects be established? Should artificial habitat structures be valued, perhaps even
costed, in comparison to the natural structures they replace or for the ecosystem services they
can provide? Can (and should) such projects be undertaken at scale and with what additional
implications?
 Notes on more-than-human architecture  33

How can generative design approaches affect public reception of artificial habitats? Can
the public be better persuaded when the information on the existing trees, their appearances
and their affordances are compared with the information on artificial habitat structures and
effectively narrated? For example, the public can be given an opportunity to observe and fol-
low the self-design and recovery processes instigated or assisted by synthetic structures. With
contemporary interactive technologies, this participation can be local or remote, real-time or
asynchronous, as desired. This information can be framed as stories about specific characters,
or games, or provided as some form of ambient information that links typical human habi-
tats with the dwellings of other animals. In the context where the strategies are unusual and
the outcomes are not necessarily evident or intuitive, the design of engagement strategies in
parallel with the design of a material intervention is necessary for the attainment of a lasting
cross-species partnership.
Admission of nonhuman clients and partners has the potential to further reinforce the
quantitative turn in design and planning. This turn has been predicated by the increasingly
widespread commitment to sustainability, wellbeing and other performance targets that pre-
scribe technical and financial audits, energy models, performance codes and rating systems.
These measures aim to outmode unsustainable architecture and promote best practice but,
given the broad reach of national and international auditing schemes, can have a standardising
effect on design. With the focus on statistical data describing behaviour and preferences of
ecosystem participants, such standardising effects can be further amplified. On the other hand,
the recognition of the local, spontaneous and non-repeatable character of ecosystems can help
to reinforce the unique features of habitats, especially with the help of on-demand, context-
specific data collection and deliberate reliance on alternative sources of creativity such as the
capability of ecosystems for self-design or the idea of partnering with nature (Odum, 2007;
Van der Ryn and Cowan, 2007 [1996]).

Conclusion
“[H]ow can designers join things together again if they continue to be educated, and employed,
as profit-enhancing specialists, rather than ecologically and socially-minded generalists?” asks
Wood (2008, p. 2) His own answer is that “[d]esigners . . . need to cocreate a discourse that
enables everyone to understand things in a more holistic and relational way.” (Wood, 2007)
A variety of parallel approaches already exists, including, for example, design activism (Fuad-
Luke, 2009) and metadesign (Giaccardi and Fischer, 2008; Wood, 2008).
Redirective practices of this type aim to reshape what a designing subject is, knows and
does. Such practices seek to modify how people think about familiar or future phenom-
ena. Given the problematic (unsustainable) nature of many established approaches, redi-
rective efforts need to challenge the very basic assumptions. As argued by Fischer (Fischer,
2003, p. 89),“[u]ser-centered and participatory design approaches have focused primarily on
activities taking place at design time,” neglecting to support “systems as living entities that
can evolve over time.” In response, his interpretation of “metadesign” is as “a unique design
approach concerned with opening up solution spaces rather than complete solutions (hence
the prefix meta-), and aimed at creating social and technical infrastructures in which new
forms of collaborative design can take place.”
This conceptualisation, while arriving from the field of software engineering, with differ-
ent types of users and problems, is a suggestive approach with which to tackle the challenge
34  Stanislav Roudavski

of rethinking design as congregations of complexly interrelated ongoing performances of

dynamic systems, or ecologies. Complete and instantaneous solutions are impossible in such
situations, especially when the challenge is that of redesigning the design practices and the
designers themselves. Instead, methods of change should be gradual: accumulating expertise;
constructing demonstrators; building evidence; developing workflows; establishing concepts,
building communities and sharing knowledge.
On the other hand, in interactions with complex natural systems, especially those that have
experienced severe modification, passive and gradual approaches might be insufficient. Often,
it is necessary to conduct an invasive experiment to solicit a response that can be informative
for future design. Radical imagination is also vital in times of radical change and it is impor-
tant to see how the limitations of human creativity can be simultaneously overcome and the
power of this creativity amplified through broadly inclusive partnerships with nonhuman
stakeholders. In resistance to unification driven by quantitative methods and common mod-
els, it is important to defend diverse design approaches even if this is inefficient because all
human knowledge is destined to remain incomplete and all human models are simplifications,
especially in the case of complex and inherently nondeterministic systems. By analogy with
cultural diversity and biodiversity, the investment into the redundancy of envisioned futures
will contribute to the robustness of the system, with multiple approaches tried in parallel, with
possibilities for local adaptation supported by additional degrees of freedom and with oppor-
tunities for the expression of context-specific creativity intentionally preserved.

* * *

In discussing the possible approaches to the rethinking of design, this chapter has employed
an example that considered questions arising from the proposal to design artificial habitats
to replace large old trees. Unusual but characteristic of future challenges, this example high-
lighted the need for further theoretical and practical work on design values, design participa-
tion and possible design methods.
The core tenets of the conceptual approaches outlined above can lead to a broad impact
only through systematic deployment at multiple sites of practice. The emerging notions and
techniques need to be actively integrated into the institutional education, manifest themselves
via best-practice guidelines and be emphasised in disseminated project work. The positive
outcomes of such integration will take form of improved design methods, supported across
domains of knowledge, founded on shared conceptual frameworks and delivered to all, on
demand. For example, the project that aims to propose artificial replacements for large old
trees can be made more informed, more accountable and more influential if it is tackled as
open-source and open-access speculative research that aims to produce specific solutions, but
also share tools for independent analysis, provide information to support external criticism
and prepare practical kits of techniques that can be customised and redeployed elsewhere.

Acknowledgements
Ideas in this article have been developed in with Gwyllim Jahn and their discussion in applica-
tion to technical systems can be seen in a collaborative journal article (Roudavski and Jahn,
2016). This work has been supported by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Grant
DP170104010, Place and Parametricism: Provocations for the Rethinking of Design.
 Notes on more-than-human architecture  35

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