Pedagogy of Interspecies Design

• In Event: 43.080 - Sheraton Roundtable Six - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 43.080-5 - Curriculum Matters: Being White, Being Green

Abstract

This paper describes a pedagogical multispecies approach to design. Instead of either green tech or Uexkullian subjectivism, I propose a transactivist perspective that better addresses
non-humans as active learning beings, participating in and elaborating on the construction and meanings of built environments. A transactional approach embraces the notion that all organisms continually reconstruct each other’s environments, that meaning-making of lived experience is an ongoing and indeterminate process for all species, and that there is necessarily a pedagogical dimension to be uncovered and developed in our design considerations.

Author

• Ramsey Affifi, University of Edinburgh