BUILDING RELATIONS WITH NATURE BY DESIGN METHODS

Abstract

Culture, art, and design can help us as a society and for each earthling to reflect on the ambivalent relationship between nature and humans in the Anthropocene by raising the critical question of how we can build more sustainable relations with nature through design. Respectively, this project documentation informs about my graduation project within the MFA embedded design program at HDK-Valand, focusing on design, organization, and sustainability. As a designer in collaboration with a biosphere reserve region, for the research phase, I embedded myself in their organization called REGIO and acquired relevant knowledge by conducting interviews with actors from politics, tourism, agriculture, sustainability, arts, and design. In the artistic phase, we invited individuals from and around the area of the UNESCO biosphere reserve Grosses Walsertal in Vorarlberg, Austria to a participatory design intervention. Following in spring 2022 we initiated for the first time a design camp (Nature Design Camp) and design workshop dedicated to the topics of sustainability and community to build new relations between these fields. This documentation follows how the individual’s valuable perspectives and ideas on the topics were brought together in one place through design and eventually provides findings that can be applied also in other design projects to build relations with nature and humans.