More Than Human: Reimagining Relationships Beyond the Human-Centred Lens

"Kelp Council" by designer Julia Lohmann

Five large seaweed forms gather for an evocative meeting, suspended in mid-air—silent and sculptural, yet far from static. There’s a sense that they are listening, or perhaps sensing. Kelp Council, a work by designer Julia Lohmann, invites us to imagine a conversation we have long forgotten how to join.

This kind of imaginative thinking runs throughout More Than Human, an exhibition currently on view at the Design Museum in London until 5 October 2025. Rather than presenting objects for passive admiration, the exhibition invites visitors into encounters—with sea creatures, rivers, insects, forests, and stories. Featuring over 140 works by artists, architects, designers, and researchers, the show challenges the long-standing notion that humans are separate from nature.

This belief—that the natural world exists apart from us, to be controlled or exploited—is not merely a philosophical stance. It is a root cause of environmental degradation. As curator Justin McGuirk observes, this sense of separation underpins the idea that landscapes are there to be extracted from and discarded into. While the Enlightenment elevated human reason above nature, industrialisation and modern urban life have only deepened our disconnection from the ecosystems we depend on.

In this context, More Than Human is less a showcase of design solutions and more a quiet, critical reflection on how design might begin again—from a place of relationship, rather than dominance.

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Oase by designer Johanna Seelemann

From Control to Coexistence

Some of the works propose tangible responses. In Oase, German designer Johanna Seelemann creates hand-built terracotta vessels that slowly release water to trees in dry urban environments (previously featured in Plural).Drawing from traditional irrigation methods, the project responds to the increasingly fragile conditions of urban greenery in the face of climate change. It asks what it means to design with sensitivity toward the non-human lives that share our cities—and how everyday infrastructure might shift from systems of control to gestures of care.

A few steps further, Pollinator Pathmaker: Perceptual Field by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg brings us into the perceptual world of insects. In this tapestry, the logic of a garden is reversed: its colours, shapes, and layouts are not arranged for human enjoyment, but for the preferences of pollinators. Developed through an algorithm informed by entomological research, the work doesn’t ask viewers to decode insect behaviour—it asks them to step aside, to observe without control.

Pollinator Pathmaker: Perceptual Field, artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Front: Baskets woven by Ye’kuana women of the Venezuelan Amazon, created through a ritual process that honours the forest.
Back: Rumiti—leaf-clad figures from Satriano di Lucania, Italy—emerge from Christian and pagan traditions, reviving ancestral ties to the land.

Relearning How to Belong

Not all the contributions are driven by new materials or technologies. Several artists and designers look to knowledge systems and lifeways that have long challenged the notion of human exceptionalism.

Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares presents maps co-created with Indigenous communities in São Paulo. These are not satellite renderings or geometric grids; they are visual narratives. They trace lived experiences, the transmission of memory, and territorial claims rooted in presence and resistance. In these maps, the forest is not a passive background. It is a political actor, a relative, a witness.

Nearby, a group of handwoven baskets draws the eye—not through scale, but through story. Created by members of the Ye’kuana people of the Venezuelan Amazon, the Jojo and Wüwa baskets reflect a sacred practice. Each basket begins with songs—rituals that ask the rainforest for permission to take what is needed. The finished forms, decorated with animals and symbols, are not representations of the forest. They are made with it and from it. In Ye’kuana culture, weaving is not an act of design—it is an act of relation.

Accalmie by Bento Architecture

Making with Living Systems

Design, in this exhibition, isn’t only a matter of form or function—it becomes a way to question timelines and materials.

Australian designer Jessie French presents two striking panels made from red algae and mineral pigments—materials chosen not only for their beauty but for their biodegradability. These works point to alternatives to synthetic vinyl, often found in commercial spaces and exhibitions. Here, the slow accumulation of minerals and the regenerative cycle of algae are held in contrast to the long life of plastic waste. French’s work suggests that material innovation must also consider impermanence.

Artist Diana Scherer offers a different take on material process. Her monumental textile wasn’t woven in the traditional sense—it was grown. By guiding the roots of plants through templates inspired by tree rings and tyre tracks, Scherer cultivates form from underground life. Her work draws attention to a layer of intelligence that often goes unseen, proposing a design language led by responsiveness and patience, rather than speed and scale.

Bento Architecture offers yet another perspective on living materials. In their project Accalmie (2023–24), the table’s base is constructed from locally sourced beechwood, while the tabletop and two stools are grown from mycelium—the root-like structure of fungi—cultivated using waste from the wooden frame itself. The name Accalmie, meaning “lull” or “calm,” refers to the mycelium’s current dormant state. After a phase of rapid growth, it rests—yet remains alive, ready to be reactivated for future adaptations or repairs. In this work, furniture becomes a living process rather than a fixed object—responsive, cyclical, and quietly radical.

Jessie French’s algae-based panels & Diana Scherer’s textile grown from guided plant roots.

We Are Landscape

More Than Human encourages us to rethink the purpose and priorities of design. Instead of centring human convenience or control, the exhibition highlights practices grounded in reciprocity, attention, and care for the living world. Across geographies and disciplines, the works on view propose new ways of seeing and making: trees become storytellers, calendars follow the rhythms of other species, and baskets carry the knowledge of entire ecosystems.

More than Human
On view at the Design Museum, London, until 5 October 2025
Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG
designmuseum.org

Photography
Courtesy of the Design Museum
By Luke Hayes

Words
Nina Zulian