A new design trend prioritises the needs of bugs and animals above human beings. Rima Sabina Aouf finds out if "interspecies design" is the next step in creating more sustainable spaces and objects.
An exhibition designed to invite in animals, a garden optimised for the senses of pollinators rather than humans and architecture designed with nooks in which birds and insects can nestle form part of the novel approach.
"This is a subject that we have been more and more interested in," the co-founder of London design practice Blast Studio Paola Garnousset told Dezeen.
Blast Studio started out by making 3D-printed structures from waste coffee cups where mycelium ? the filamentous part of fungus that has applications as an architectural and design material ? could grow. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg's Pollinator Pathmaker project is about optimising gardens for the pleasure of pollinators
"Exploring how other species experience the world and ? in the case of Pollinator Pathmaker ? how they experience the things that humans create, opens up a world filled with empathy," said Ginsberg.
"We need to think beyond sustainability towards prioritising the natural world."
MoMA's senior design curator Paola Antonelli has also developed an interest in interspecies design. She suspects the approach has a "very long history" but that it is reemerging in the West in line with the recuperation of indigenous knowledge and the rise of the rights of nat...