Beaver State News

Designing For The Flourishing Of All Species

In May 2019, the United Nations released the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warning that human activities will drive nearly one million species to extinction in a few decades. The primary reasons for this are habitat loss and biodiversity demise caused by a changing climate, pollution, non-indigenous species, land clearing, overpopulation, and consumption. The College of Design transpecies design initiative puts design to work in an effort to address the challenges species extinction presents all life on earth.

The College of Design is committed to reversing the ecological harms human activities create for a myriad number of life forms. In response to the rapid loss of species, that currently sits between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural baseline rate, faculty and students across the college have been working to harness our strengths in environmental and sustainable design to create built environments wherein a variety of species can flourish.

In the inaugural Bruton Design Intensive students were tasked with designing a new building façade system that could be home to Oregon’s endangered indigenous bumblebees. Product Design students have been studying how to create infrastructure that supports other-than-human species habitats. Meanwhile, faculty from the Institute for Health and the Built Environment conduct research on how microbes proliferate and distribute throughout buildings. Faculty and students working in mass timber construction study how the mass timber industry provides a valuable platform for sustainable forest management and accordingly reduces habitat loss from wildfires. The Department of Landscape Architecture hosted a transpecies design retreat in July 2022 at the Overlook Field School, bringing together renowned scientists, artists, and architects from across the United States to collectively grapple with the challenge species extinction presents the design disciplines. For the 2021-2022 academic year, the Department of the History of Art and Architecture transpecies design lecture series presented a broad spectrum of notable writers, thinkers, and art practitioners, exploring topics such as interspecies communication in art, to exhibitions featuring live animals and taxidermy. 

Original source can be found here