AN APPLIED MORE-THAN-HUMAN URBAN DESIGN STUDIO
Designing from a Plants’ Perspective
A 5-Day intensive within Politecnico di Milano’s Master of Science Programme, exploring designing for coexistence between urban forests and human spaces, using non-human personas and biomimicry
What this project explores
Designing from the Plants’ Perspective explores what happens when plants are treated not as background, resources, or decoration, but as legitimate actors in design.
Forest La Goccia is a spontaneous urban forest in Milan reclaiming an abandoned industrial site, and now absorbs more carbon than London’s Hyde Park. But the forest’s neighbour, Politecnico University, needs to expand.
Fabio Di Liberto, a professor of Politecnico for 17 years, invited the Life-centred Design Lab to support a 5-day design workshop with the students from within the forest and the classroom to explore how the university’s expansion could be redesigned to respect the needs of both the university and the young forest.
Over five intensive days, students move beyond human-centred assumptions and learned to sense, interpret, and respond to plant life as active participants in shared environments, using non-human personas, biomimicry, and other more-than-human design tools from the LCD Lab.
Politecnico di Milano University next to Forest la Goccia, an abandoned industrial site which nature has reclaimed.
How might urban forests and expanding human spaces coexist?
Urban spaces & infrastructure
University campuses, pathways, buildings, and thresholds are reframed as living urban systems rather than fixed human infrastructure. The project examines how expansion, circulation, and materials can adapt to existing forest ecologies instead of erasing them.
Plants as primary actors
Forest La Goccia’s plants are treated as active participants in the city, shaping soil health, microclimates, carbon absorption, and biodiversity. By giving plants a voice through non-human personas, students explore how urban development decisions directly affect plant survival and regeneration.
Behaviours, sensing & coexistence
Everyday human movement, learning routines, and spatial habits are reconsidered through a more-than-human lens. The project explores how slowing down, sensing differently, and designing for care can reduce harm and enable respectful coexistence between people and plant life.
Living ecosystems under pressure
The forest is understood as a dynamic ecosystem shaped by time, disturbance, and recovery. Students examine how habitat fragmentation, soil compaction, heat stress, and construction impact plant communities, and how design can support long-term ecological resilience rather than short-term growth.
The problems and opportunities
Urban development often treats nature as a constraint to manage rather than a living system to design with. Forests are reduced to buffers or compensation zones, leading to fragmented ecosystems and short-term solutions that overlook long-term ecological health.
This seminar reframes that challenge by addressing:
- Urban expansion that prioritises human use over ecological intelligence
- Design processes that exclude plants and ecosystems as stakeholders
- Loss of biodiversity through fragmentation and extractive planning
- Missed opportunities to learn from how forests self-organise, adapt, and coexist
Parco la Goccia offers a rare opportunity to reverse this logic, positioning an urban forest not as land to be absorbed, but as a collaborator in shaping a shared urban future.
Politecnico’s planned expansion into Forest La Goccia.
Students capturing observations of nature using LCD Lab’s more-than-human design tools.
Students creating personas for plants using LCD Lab’s more-than-human design tools.
Damien Lutz and Politecnico students in Milan’s Forest La Goccia
Students capturing observations of nature using LCD Lab’s more-than-human design tools.
Franceso Vergani, Fabio di Liberto, and Damien Lutz.
Unlock the ideas that design for all life
Members access the more-than-human innovations in detail.
Plus free tools, the non-human persona library, and introductions to futuring, biomimicry, and other life-centred design branches.
The Life-centred Shift
Urban development is often designed through a human-centred lens that treats nature-reclaimed spaces as empty land, obstacles, or aesthetic backdrops to be cleared, controlled, or built over.
Life-centred design reframes these spaces as living systems with agency, inviting human development to adapt, coexist, and regenerate alongside the plants, soils, and ecosystems already shaping the site.
From:
Urban development that treats nature-reclaimed spaces as obstacles to be cleared, controlled, or built over.
To:
Respecting urban wildlife spaces as living systems with agency, inviting human development to adapt, coexist, and regenerate.
Interested in a More Than Human workshop?
This workshop can be customised to your place (building, school, etc.) and duration needs.
Learn More-Than-Human Design
