With Designing and Living with Organisms (DLO), Svenja developed perspectives for sustainable designing and living by investigating more-than human perspectives to textile design. For three years she developed 3 different types of experiments at the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy and moved her experimental house in which she would live together with the research experiments to a small farm in Hvalsø, 50km outside of Copenhagen. The project received funding from the Swedish Research Council through an international postdoc grant at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås.

DLO highlights the potential of textiles and textile thinking to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of the more-than-human world, thus contributing to more sustainable ways of designing and living.

Textiles as mediators: DLO shows how textiles can connect people and nature. The project has explored textile-based artefacts that invite engagement with non-human neighbours like insects and birds, reflect the rhythms of the local ecosystem, and inspire the human neighbours to  observe, contemplate, reflect, be patient, and follow up on observations.

Methodological and conceptual contributions: DLO promotes a design practice that uses artefacts as inquiry tools, and employs multiple approaches and methods to explore complexity and diversity, nature’s core principles. DLO also showed how a design practice can become a personal development journey to sensitise oneself to the world of insects, and how to involve others. This has been done by creating and facilitating a community and developing the I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp methodology.

Redefining the role of the designer: The project redefines the role of the designer. By advocating designs that invite (not force or attract) living organisms, DLO challenges the notion of designers as sole creators and controllers of a situation. Instead, it positions them as partners in a co-creative process that honours the agency, integrity, timing, seasonality and expression of the more-than-human.

Fostering co-creation: DLO promotes the collective development of more-than-human design through the I.N.S.E.C.T. community and summercamps. With each camp, we refine our methods that deepen our engagement with the living environment through experimental inquiry that includes embodiment and alternative ways of knowing. A direct outcome is the VIBRA Research Network that I founded and facilitate. The network brings together researchers and practitioners from biotremology, i.e. insect vibration communication, inclusive information practices, and artistic research to connect human and non-human sensory diversity with the purpose to design more inclusive living environments for all.

These outcomes collectively position the DLO project as a significant contribution to the field of design, pushing boundaries and encouraging a more ethical, inclusive and collaborative approach to designing and living with living organisms.

Three types of textile based artefacts were created and setup across the three years.
The potential of flat structures based on woven textiles and manual 3d-printing was investigated in the first year (Shearing layers of cohabitation). This was followed by a collaborative effort in the second year, resulting in the I.N.S.E.C.T. Wall Twin, an alternative insect nesting aid that combined clay 3d-printing, mycelium composite, and freeform crochet. In the third year MultispeCity comprised several textile based multi-material three-dimensional objects into a complex installation in the entrance of the experimental home that has moved from Sweden to Denmark for that purpose.

To support the practitioners and researchers exploring more-than-human perspectives to design, Svenja facilitates the annual I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamps, now running for three years. The role of human co-creation, community building, collective inquiry and creative experimentation in developing more-than-human design methodologies became a major part of DLO. Another direct outcome of the research is the VIBRA Research Network. The network brings together researchers and practitioners from biotremology, i.e. insect vibration communication, inclusive information practices, and artistic research to connect human and non-human sensory diversity with the purpose to design more inclusive living environments for all.

Publications:

Keune, Svenja. “Designing and Living with Organisms Weaving Entangled Worlds as Doing Multispecies Philosophy.” Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice 9, no. 1 (January 2, 2021): 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/20511787.2021.1912897.

Svenja Keune, Michelle Westerlaken, and Astrid Mody. “Between Breakfast and Bed: Towards Fluid Modes of Designing and Cohabiting with Living Organisms.” In Structures and Architecture A Viable Urban Perspective? CRC Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003023555-9.

Parker, Dan, Asya Ilgün, Ariel Cheng Sin Lim, Hana Vašatko, Dan Vy Vu, Natalia Piórecka, and Svenja Keune. “I.N.S.E.C.T. Wall Twin: Designing for and with Insects, Fungi, and Humans.” Temes de Disseny, no. 39 (July 27, 2023): 228–47. https://doi.org/10.46467/TdD39.2023.228-247.

Keune, Svenja, Asya Ilgun, and Colleen Ludwig. “I.N.S.E.C.T—Summercamp: Developing Multispecies Design Perspectives, Practices, and Discourse Through Co-Creating (in) Community.” In Design for Inclusivity, edited by Magda Mostafa, Ruth Baumeister, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, and Martin Tamke, 701–15. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36302-3_52.

Keune, Svenja, Delia Dumitrescu, and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen. “Remarks on Designing for Multispecies Cohabitation : An Experimental Inquiry into the Biocolonization of Textile Facades.” In Architectures of Weaving : From Fibers and Yarns to Scaffolds and Skins, edited by Christiane Sauer; Mareike Stoll; Ebba Fransen Waldhör; Maxie Schneider, 204–11. Berlin: jovis Verlag GmbH, 2023. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-29348.

Tomico, Oscar, Anton Poikolainen Rosén, Svenja Keune, Ferran Altarriba Bertran, Danielle Wilde, Daniel Fernández Galeote, Tau Ulv Lenskjold, Ruut Tikkanen, Oğuz ’Oz Buruk, and Velvet Spors. “Seeding a Repository of Methods-To-Be for Nature-Entangled Design Research.” In Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 1101–15. IT University of Copenhagen Denmark: ACM, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3660745.

Keune, Svenja, and Ariel Cheng Sin Lim. “Textile Design Events: An Investigation into Textile Entanglements with Insects and Other Living Organisms.” Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, September 23, 2024, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/20511787.2024.2392346.

Keune, Svenja, Delia Dumitrescu, and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen. “Bioreceptive Textiles: An Experimental Inquiry into the Bio-Colonisation of Architectural Façades.” In NERD – New Experimental Research in Design III: Positions and Perspectives, edited by Tom Bieling, Michelle Christensen, and Florian Conradi. Birkhäuser, (forthcoming).

Keune, Svenja, Colleen Ludwig, Katka Černá, Anneke ter Schure, and Julia Tabet. “Staying with Complexity through Multispecies Companionship at the I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp 2023.” In More-than-Human Design in Practice, edited by Anton Poikolainen Rosén, Antti Salovaara, Andrea Botero, and Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2025.