Nature: Collaborations in Design

Edited by Andrea Lipps, Matilda McQuaid, Caitlin Condell, Gène Bertrand

With design, we have the ability to become active agents in our relationship with nature.

As humans contend with the complexities and conditions of our planet, designers are seeking more holistic and meaningful connections with nature. Today’s ecological issues cannot be addressed by one discipline alone. Designers, teamed with scientists, engineers, advocates for social and environmental justice, artists, and philosophers, are applying their knowledge toward a more harmonious and regenerative future on Earth. Nature: Collaborations in Design features essays and conversations illustrated by more than sixty projects that reveal how designers are using nature as a guide and partner.

Projects include DnA_Design and Architecture’s Bamboo Theater; Open Agriculture Initiative’s Personal Food Computers; Warka Water’s Warka Water Tower; Sam Van Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit; the ODIN’s DIY Bacterial Gene Engineering CRISPR Kit; Michael Strano and Sheila Kennedy’s Nanobionic Light-Emitting Plants; MASS Design Group’s Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture; Stamen Design’s Metagenomic Data Visualization for the Banfield Lab; Modern Meadow’s Zoa; Cave Architects’ Anthropocene Museum; Kim Albrecht’s Visualizing the Cosmic Web; and more.

Nature: Collaborations in Design is a companion to the exhibition Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, co-organized with Cube design museum.