Resource type
Date created
2024-05-03
Authors/Contributors
Author: Wakkary, Ron
Abstract
In this chapter, I aim to glimpse the future of cities by focusing on the endings of designed things that make up our cities and the multispecies gatherings around things. I rely on the more-than-human concept of biography from the design theory of designing-with. The concept refers to the combined agentic forces of designer and thing, what they inscribe into the world, and what they leave behind. I discuss the biographies of a water-lily pond and a traffic intersection, and the human and non-human gatherings that participate in their making and unmaking. The chapter extends the idea of biographies to reveal the capacities of non-human agencies and temporalities in designing; the fragility, breakdown, and shifting ontologies of waste that are central to the making and remaking of cities; and the conceptualisation of a city as a braiding together of biographies and multispecies gatherings.
Document
Identifier
DOI: 10.1093/9780191980060.003.0017
Published as
Wakkary, Ron, 'More-than-Human Biographies: Designing for their Endings', in Sara Heitlinger, Marcus Foth, and Rachel Clarke (eds), Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities: Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation (Oxford, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191980060.003.0017, accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Publication details
Publication title
Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities: Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation
Document title
More-than-Human Biographies: Designing for their Endings
Date
2024-05-03
First page
305
Last page
326
Publisher DOI
10.1093/9780191980060.003.0017
Published article URL
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author.
Scholarly level
Peer reviewed?
No
Member of collection
Download file | Size |
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More-than-human_biographies_AAM.pdf | 1.41 MB |