More Than Human: Co-creating with the living world at the Design Museum

July.

Glow worms are emerging.

Blackberries are ripening.

And the Design Museum has opened their latest exhibition, More Than Human.

What happens when we design with — not just for — the living world?

More Than Human is a groundbreaking new exhibition that radically rethinks traditional, human-centered design.

In a time of ecological reckoning and radical rethinking, More Than Human, challenges us to reconsider not just how we design, but for whom, asking a bold question: What if design wasn’t just about making life better for people — but for the planet, for animals, plants, and even rivers?

What if design wasn’t just to reduce emissions or use less plastic (though these are vital), but to reframe the entire narrative around interdependence, coexistence, and regeneration?

“We aren’t the only we,” reads a quote as you enter the exhibition hall, through a clay-coloured cave that brings you back to a time before present day — and it’s a stark reminder of just how self-centered the human species really is.

Co-curated by Justin McGuirk and Rebecca Lewin, and supported by the Future Observatory, the exhibition invites us to imagine a world where design serves not only human needs, but life itself — in its broadest, most inclusive definition.

“What if design was in support of life, in the biggest sense of that word?”
— Justin McGuirk, Co-Curator

Making nature a co-designer

More Than Human brings together over 140 visionary works from artists, architects, and designers across the globe, spotlighting a fast-growing movement that’s radically rethinking our relationship with nature.

Expect kelp sculptures you can walk through. Artworks made for octopuses. Murals giving legal rights to rivers. Pollinator-led design. Mapping tools made in partnership with Indigenous communities. From speculative tech to ancient wisdom, every piece pulses with potential for radically reframing the way we co-exist with our environment.

Deputy Director Josephine Chanter describes More Than Human as part of a wider transformation at the museum. “We’re really looking at how we can make a world where all its inhabitants really thrive,” she says. With 50% of the museum’s audience under 35, this exhibition aims to influence the next generation of designers and changemakers.

There’s Julia Lohmann’s immersive kelp installation, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s vast tapestry exploring the world through bees’ eyes, and Shimabuku’s meditative pieces designed for cephalopods. Plus an 8-metre mural on water justice, and multimedia works tracing community fishing practices in Timor and land rights activism in Brazil.

This is the first major UK exhibition dedicated to more-than-human design — a new frontier where human creativity meets ecological consciousness. Created in collaboration with Future Observatory, the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition, this exhibition is an inspiring, rallying call to think and act differently.

Section I: Being Landscape

The journey begins by dissolving the illusion of separation between humans and nature. Being Landscape reminds visitors that we are not observers of the world, but participants in it — part of an interwoven ecosystem of beings, materials, and relationships.

A highlight is the Nature Calendar by Marcus Post, which maps non-human phenomena across every day of the year. Visitors instinctively search for their birthday, uncovering the natural event aligned with their own celebration. It's a simple but poetic act — an everyday reconnection with the rhythms of the Earth.

From Northern European corn dolly practices to Amazonian basketry by the Mets Ray collective, the section showcases how design has historically been a form of ecological collaboration. It’s a rich tapestry of knowledge systems, cultural practices, and ancestral techniques that foreground sustainability not as a new trend, but as ancient wisdom.

We also see the real-world impact of design research: from a community-designed map helping to preserve a climate-regulating forest in South Parà, Brazil, to legal artworks advocating for the rights of rivers and watersheds. These projects show that design can reshape policy, protect ecosystems, and elevate non-human voices.

Living Seawalls is a tiling system that transforms coastal defence walls into habitats for marine life. The tiles come in ten different, 3D-printed modular units that resemble rock or reef formations and increase the diversity of a depleted ecosystem. They encourage colonising organisms, providing shelter for fish, seaweed and species such as oysters and barnacles that absorb pollutants and improve water quality. Living Seawalls has been successfully installed across shores in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Section II: Making with the World

The second section zooms into practical, contemporary responses — how today’s designers are learning to collaborate with living systems.

There’s beauty in the modesty of some of these designs: passive fishing traps that protect marine life, or living seawalls that welcome biodiversity back to human-altered coasts. Each is a case study in humility — design that listens rather than dictates.

Andrés Hacho’s Transpecies Rosette reimagines building facades not as barriers, but as hosts. Made from undulating cork, the structure invites microbes, plants, and insects to take residence. It’s an architectural rethink rooted in generosity — where buildings don’t just house humans, but become ecosystems in themselves.

We also see material innovation in action: mycelium, algae, grasses — materials that live, grow, and decay. To work with them is to relinquish control. These materials don’t obey the designer; they co-create. It’s a new design ethic: one of collaboration, not dominance.

“When you’re designing with these things, you’re not a designer in full control. You’re co-designing with natural processes.”
— Justin McGuirk

Section III: Shifting Perspective

The final section steps into the speculative. What does it mean to design as if we could inhabit another species’ worldview? We cannot be a spider, or a dolphin, but we can attempt empathy, curiosity, and imagination.

Nests — constructed by birds and insects — are displayed as objects of functional genius: local, adaptive, even medicinal. Birds weave antibacterial herbs into their structures. What would happen if human architecture followed their lead?

Dolphin Embassy (2017) pushes the boundaries of cross-species communication, exploring what it might mean to design in harmony with dolphins — in their space, not ours. It’s both impossible and essential.

At the heart of this section is a striking tapestry by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, a culmination of a five-year project that began as a garden generated by algorithm — removing human aesthetic preferences and placing pollinator needs first. This work has already seeded new gardens across London, including one designed by local children just down the street from the museum.

“This is the beginning of rewriting what design can be — not for us, but for all life.”
— Rebecca Lewin, Co-Curator

Why This Matters, Now More Than Ever

More Than Human is a manifesto. It challenges our human-centred worldview and offers new vocabularies, new aesthetics, and new values for design in a planetary age.

For those committed to people and planet, this exhibition is a touchstone. It asks the urgent questions: How can design repair what it helped destroy? How can it restore our relationship with the Earth? And how can we design with life, rather than despite it?

It’s a call to all of us to shift perspective, reimagine our place in the world, and create futures where all beings can thrive.

Bring your families. Bring your friends. And above all, bring your curiosity.