Design Nature
Design for Nature
Design with Nature
ACTANT FOREST is a design laboratory for creating a pleasant symbiosis between nature and urban life. We are engaged in a wide range of design research, drawing on the design knowledge gained from our urban life in Tokyo and the Netherlands, and the wild wisdom gained from our forest, or lab.
The concept of our activities is ‘Design with Nature’. We welcome the diverse actors of nature as design partners in an attempt to design alternative systems and practices for the major changes that are expected to affect the earth and society in the future. In order to explore more flexible lifestyles and towns in the face of increasingly complex social and environmental changes, we are co-creating with a diverse range of organisms, including micro-organisms, plants, insects and animals.
Naturally, humans are not special beings that dominate nature, and ACTANT FOREST’s aim is not to design (control) nature for humans, nor to design (solve problems) for nature. The emphasis is on a process of thinking ‘with’ nature, in which both the way nature is and our sensibilities are renewed.
Modern society has made people’s lives safer and more comfortable by using technology to control the natural environment. This modern way of life has been breaking down everywhere in recent years and continues to create conflicts that are only getting more complex and difficult to know how to resolve, as well as unpredictable environmental risks. Such problems are once again making urban life, which should have been designed and made comfortable in every nook and cranny of society, uneasy and suffocating.
At the same time, looking at the natural environment around us, we can see that satoyama and bamboo forests, which were once rich in nature, have become noticeably degraded. The natural environment, not only in the mountains and forests near cities, but also in the oceans and rivers throughout Japan (and the world), is becoming more unstable than ever before. The ecosystem of symbiosis between people and nature that has existed for a long time since prehistoric times is not functioning well, and both cities and the natural environment are slowly being exhausted without being able to utilise each other’s resources.
What we need now is a more flexible way of design that allows both the natural environment and urban life to connect with ease. We need a more flexible design approach that allows both the natural environment and urban life to connect with each other in a secure manner.
Nature is much more robust and resilient than we imagine it to be. Reconstructing the way we connect with the natural environment with the idea of ‘Design with Nature’ will not only restore the cycle of goodness to nature that humans have exhausted, but will also make our society more flexible and sustainable.
It is easy to forget, when we spend our days walking on asphalt and working in buildings, that we are essentially animals, woven into the network of nature. Reviewing our lives in the context of our entanglement with nature is as much about reviewing our own bodies and sensibilities as it is about daily exercise and skin care.
Through the concept of ‘Design with Nature’, the urban and the wild are placed in a single circle, while increasing the number of more flexible lifestyle and business options in urban life than is currently the case. To achieve this, not only objects and information but also experience and wisdom are woven into the design. This is the Purpose of ACTANT FOREST.