The course “Designing in a Multispecies World” explores emerging design paradigms that foreground relationships between humans and non-humans—particularly plants—in urban contexts. Rooted in the concept of multispecies design, the course challenges traditional anthropocentric and Cartesian perspectives by encouraging students to view cities not merely as human-centred spaces, but as dynamic “assemblages” of diverse lifeforms.

Throughout the course, students investigate how urban environments can support more inclusive, interspecies coexistence, each envisioning everyday scenarios of human and non-human cohabitation in the city of Milan.

Divided into three phases (Collecting, Interpreting, Envisioning), the course begins with multispecies ethnography, where students practice “noticing” and “decentering” to attune to the perspectives and behaviours of non-human agents. This is followed by speculative and performative design exercises that reflect on the legal and political recognition of plant agency. In the final phase, students imagine future urban relationships between humans, plants and other non-humans, designing grounded experiences of multispecies interaction and care.