(3.2) Open Lecture: Becoming-with

We open our 2026 programme with the first of three Open Lectures. The series begins with Lukas Franciszkiewicz, who will facilitate a workshop with a limited number of participants, followed by a conversation open to everyone.

Across design, enormous effort has gone into reducing harm: recyclable products, repair services, low-carbon materials, biomaterials, zero-waste processes, net-zero buildings and more. These practices are vital, yet they often operate as damage control – incremental attempts to slow down trajectories that are already deeply unsustainable. In this situation, it becomes difficult to avoid the sense that more of the same will not be enough.

What if, instead of focusing primarily on minimising impact, design began from a different question: how might we actively contribute to the flourishing of ecosystems and conditions of coexistence? Asking this requires a shift in vantage point. It means loosening the grip of a purely human-centred worldview and considering what other beings, systems and environments need in order to thrive.

Workshop Format

How might design look if it started not from human needs and convenience, but from the situated perspectives of other beings and systems – from infrastructures, materials, animals, microbes or algorithms? How do we shift our attention to recognise these other actors as partners rather than problems to solve? What changes when we stop designing for and start designing with?

In this afternoon session, small mixed groups will work with simple exercises – observation, attunement, notation – to temporarily inhabit the viewpoint of a chosen more-than-human entity. Rather than aiming for solutions or polished outcomes, the workshop foregrounds modes of attention: slowing down, listening across difference and staging situations where other agencies become legible. The resulting prototypes, sketches, scripts and spatial setups become tools for thinking and sharing what emerges when you suspend your familiar role as designer.

Who is it for?

Practitioners and students across design disciplines are welcome. Prior experience with speculative modes of action is not required. No specific methodological background is required, only a willingness to experiment, to temporarily suspend familiar roles and to explore what a more-than-human design practice might feel like in our everyday environment.

Workshop registration is required. Limited places available. mail to office@idrv.org