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"In nature's economy, the currency is not money, it is life." This reflection by Vandana Shiva (2005) invites a perspective shift toward the vitality of systems that sustain life, by proposing a metric of wealth grounded in the intrinsic value of living organisms, instead of the dominant logics of agro-industry and corporate globalisation. It is with this invitation that we turn attention to the interdependencies of the living, and rethink the epistemological practices we inherit, reproduce, and transmit to future generations.
With the theoretical paradigm of a so-called "universal human", modern design as we know and teach it neglects the networks of relations that make life possible, and reveals a deeply exclusionary framework that sustains a separate and hierarchical worldview, silencing other forms of existence. This anthropocentric perspective has been widely critiqued by scholars advocating for systemic approaches (Papanek, 1985; Fry, 2009; Escobar, 2018; Forlano, 2017; Giaccardi & Redström, 2020).
"Innovation may not lie in producing more solutions, but in unlearning this centrality and relearning how to coexist."
It is within this context that LifeLab emerges as a pedagogical and experimental initiative aiming to reconfigure design education in response to contemporary social and ecological crises. The project challenges the anthropocentric paradigm and develops learning methodologies deeply rooted in relationships between humans, ecosystems, and territories. Through workshops, trainings and seminars, LifeLab works with educators, students, artists, scientists, craftspeople, and more-than-human life.
The universal human figure: hierarchy, separation, control
Human-centred design emerged as a response to earlier technocentric approaches (Norman & Draper, 1986; Krippendorff, 2004). While it contributed to making design more attentive to human experience, it consolidated a framework that privileges a narrowly defined notion of the human — one oriented toward control, simplification, and management, overlooking ecosystem complexity.
Far beyond a methodological concern, anthropocentrism operates as an ontological structure, determining which entities are recognised as existing, relevant, and valuable. These structural divisions — between human and non-human, subject and object, culture and nature — are grounded in processes of exclusion and hierarchy, producing material value that shapes modes of existence.
Colonialism and the politics of knowledge
The very notion of the "human" is neither neutral nor universal. Deeply rooted in European colonialism, it prioritises a particular experience — white, western, male, and modern. Malcolm Ferdinand in Decolonial Ecology (2021) draws on the concept of the Plantationocene to historicise colonial dwelling. Through practices of demarcation, mapping, and classification, entire landscapes are reconfigured into bounded units inscribed as resources for exploitation (Pappalardo, 2022). Nature becomes progressively objectified — stripped of its interdependencies and transformed into an exchangeable resource.
Decentering the Human: Rethinking Design from a Life-Centred Perspective
Beyond Western canons, many cosmologies are structured through relational logics in which humans, animals, plants, and territories coexist within inseparable networks of interdependence (Salazar et al., 2025). We seek to engage with an expanded notion of design — not as the imposition of form upon matter, but as a situated practice of cohabitation that repositions the human as part of multispecies networks of coexistence (Haraway, 2016).
Moving beyond human-centred design requires a fundamental revision of the ontological and epistemological foundations underpinning both design education and practice. It calls for an opening toward multiple knowledge systems and a shift toward a relational understanding in which diverse forms of life, materials, and territories actively participate in shaping design processes.
"The living is no longer conceived as a resource but becomes an active condition of the design process."
In this context, LIFELAB positions itself as a pedagogical and experimental infrastructure. By structuring its activities around immersive intercultural workshops, teacher training programmes, and interdisciplinary research, the project creates concrete conditions to experiment with life-centred design practices. Learning moves away from universal abstractions and emerges from situated relationships with specific ecosystems, materials, and communities.
LifeLab as a pedagogical infrastructure
LIFELAB is committed to life-centred design, recognising the importance of ecosystems and interdependencies, and responding to the urgent need to integrate forms of life into design education. This integration entails a profound transformation in how we understand the world and our place within it. By grounding all pedagogical approaches in relationships, contexts, and multiple forms of life, the project reconfigures the outdated frameworks through which design has been conceived, taught, and practised.
Through iterative methodologies, the project develops a transferable toolbox of teaching methods. Learning emerges through direct engagement with materials, ecosystems, and territories, where the living is no longer an object but an active agent. Teacher training ensures these experiences are embedded within sustained educational practices. At the same time, the research programme supports their systematisation and dissemination, connecting multiple fields of knowledge.
This openness extends to the accessibility of outcomes through open-source resources, publications, digital platforms, and a travelling exhibition — ensuring that practices developed extend beyond the immediate project context, enabling different educational communities to appropriate, adapt, and reinterpret them.
By shifting the centre of design toward the interdependencies of the living, LIFELAB contributes to an educational model that actively participates in redefining how we think, practise, and inhabit the world through life-centred design.