More than Human - a new exhibition aiming to shift our perspective
This new exhibition at the Design Museum takes an optimistic, exploratory approach to designing in a climate crisis. Taking us on a journey through three sections, it aims to shift our human-centred mindset by the time we come out the other end.
More than Human is open at the Design Museum this weekend. The exhibition features works by artists and designers seeking to dissolve the division between the human and the non-human. Rather than just shrinking our impact, the exhibition asks how can we design a future where all of nature flourishes?
The title alludes to the ‘human-centred design’ approach - a process used in design development in market-led societies, putting human needs and contexts at the centre to create products and services that we love, but often resulting in more consumption and inadequate consideration for anything else.
Everything we use is designed, so the Design Museum is a suitable home to explore other creative approaches.
The exhibition guides us through three sections:
‘Being landscape’ reminds us that we are part of nature. A calendar of events occurring in the natural world by month; artworks, objects and video show ways that communities celebrate their relationship with the land and environment.
‘Making the world’ ponders how we can ‘relearn’ to design in harmony with the world around us. This includes using living materials, such as a table top grown from mycelium (the root-like part of fungi), and a vast, patterned wall hanging grown from plant roots.
Designing for the benefit of 'more than' humans includes architecture that hosts birds and insects by design, with a pavilion designed for multiple species.
‘Shifting perspective’ invites a non-human design perspective. We can examine shelters built by birds, wasps or ants, their materials and methods. A tapestry explores the perspectives of pollinators.
Perhaps controversially, AI is being used to help a river communicate its needs.
The exhibition is exploratory and conceptual, and aims to shift our mindset through creativity and optimism. If we could think about the future without humans at the centre of everything, new ways of seeing problems and designing our future may become apparent.
This is the first exhibition jointly curated by the Design Museum and its national sustainable design research programme, Future Observatory.
Designers' projects that they have funded have been showcased in free displays at the museum since it was set up 3 years ago, showing a commitment to address solutions for the future through design.
More than Human is at the Design Museum until 5th October 2025.
