More-Than-Human Neighbourhood: An Observation and Sketching Workshop

What lives around us that we usually fail to notice? In this workshop, we will use sketching to explore the plants, insects, and other species with whom we share the neighbourhood around Center Rog.

For centuries, sketching has been an important method of scientific inquiry and a way of understanding the world. It is not simply about drawing what we see, but about looking closely, asking questions, and discovering connections that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Through sketching, we will also explore how we perceive our environment and our relationships with other species. Together, we will consider how the way we look at the world shapes our understanding and design of space, and ask whether we take the needs of other living beings sufficiently into account.

The workshop is open to anyone interested in nature, including citizen scientists, urban planners, designers, and students who would like to discover how simple sketching techniques can help us observe and understand our surroundings more closely and develop new approaches to design that include nature as well.

No sketching experience is required, and sketchers of all skill levels are welcome.

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Workshop facilitators are Youp Ferket, Oscar Tomico and Doenja Oogjes.

Youp Ferket recently started his PhD as part of the Regenerative Ecologies of Design and Production for the European Heritage project. As a designer and researcher, he is interested in researching and developing regenerative design practices, creating spaces for more-than-human participation in the design process. Last year, he graduated from the Industrial Design master’s programme at TU/e, with a focus on developing tools and practices for conducting multi-species ethnography, such as using sketching for noticing. Since then, he has published a pictorial based on his master’s thesis and worked on a documentary, experiences which he hopes to continue building on as part of his PhD.

Oscar Tomico is an associate professor at the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology on Design Research Methodologies for Posthuman Sustainability. His research expands the context of human-centred design and positions designers as part of complex ecological systems. Building on his research on first-person research methodologies, he explores ecologies of design, production, and use, focusing on the impact they have on the coexistence and cohabitation with other-than-human actors, such as plants. He is currently involved in projects ranging from exploring more-than-human cohabitation in the greening of interior spaces through multi-species design, situating design practice as part of existing ecosystems, and analysing the impact of local regenerative social-ecological-technical systems of production.

Doenja Oogjes is an assistant professor in Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and a researcher in the field of human-computer interaction. Her work starts from the premise that technology is reshaping the world around us in ways we rarely stop to examine, especially when that world extends beyond the human. Her research moves through material dialogues with city trees, the company of bees, backyards as liminal spaces, and listening practices for waters running through her own neighbourhood, workshopping more-than-human practices across these sites. Grounded in feminist posthumanism, her work moves between theory, method, and design research practice, and is currently taking shape in MoTH Studio, a space she is co-establishing on campus for biomonitoring and situated research and teaching.

The workshop is part of the Regenerative Ecologies of Design and Production (RED&Pro) project.