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 How can process 

 led research inform 

 an interior design   practice that 

 explores the ecology  and ontology of 

more-than-human entities in the urban interior? 

Humans have a tendency to categorise and make a name for everything. In the west, we name the natural world ‘nature,’ and so exclude ourselves from it. This exclusion causes a sense of disassociation from our innate place within the living world. A world that includes the densely populated cities and urban environments. This disassociation is a deep rooted issue within our current ecological crisis. This provoked my intrigue in rethinking the dominant and destructive view that humans are the most significant entities on the planet. This research explores what processes can be developed in an interior design practice that focuses on more-than-human entities instead. Non human entities are living and non living bodies.. Throughout this research I engaged with bugs, bricks, a wheelbarrow, a wind chime, a eucalyptus tree, a fig tree, mouldy tea, sun, clouds, wind and rain, curb sides, sidewalks and rubbish to name a few.  I have applied the lenses of ontology (the philosophy of being) and ecology (interactions amongst organisms and their environment) to conceptually frame a series of projects that encourage a reinterpretation of our urban surroundings. This research sees attentiveness as a pedagogy. It utilises observations of these entities as gestures for making. I engaged in processes of interiorization, experimenting with expanded drawing, film, photography, projection, public intervention, installation and assemblage to frame and enhance these observed entities. This body of research questions the ontological agency and ecological value of our urban surroundings, independent of our human associations. This process led research explores the design of a spatial experience that fosters an ecological curiosity and sensitivity to places and things that are not typically understood as ‘natural’. Can these experiences subsequently cultivate a re-interpretation of humans’ relationship with the living world?

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