Professor Justin McGuirk of the Design Museum, United Kingdom, will present ‘Designing With and For the Living World’ at at The 14th European Conference on Education (ECE2026), The 14th European Conference on Arts & Humanities (ECAH2026), and The 6th European Conference on Aging & Gerontology (EGen2026), to be held in London, United Kingdom, and online.
Justin McGuirk is Director of Future Observatory, the United Kingdom’s national design research programme for the green transition, based at the Design Museum in London, where he previously served as Chief Curator. An award-winning writer, curator, and author, his work explores the intersections of design, society, and environmental change.
This keynote will discuss the role of design in addressing the ongoing climate crisis and advancing the green transition, featuring insights from current projects supported by Future Observatory. The talk will expand upon how design can move beyond human-centred approaches to engage with landscapes, ecosystems, and other species, and challenge delegates to rethink design’s role in shaping more sustainable futures.
This keynote presentation will be held both onsite in London and online via live-stream. To participate in ECE/ECAH/EGen2026 as an audience member, please register for the conference via the conference website.
The presentation will also be available for IAFOR Members to view online as part of their membership benefits. To find out more about becoming an IAFOR Member, please visit the IAFOR Membership page.
Speaker Biography
Justin McGuirk
the Design Museum, United Kingdom
Justin McGuirk is the director of Future Observatory, the United Kingdom’s national design research programme for the green transition, based at the Design Museum in London. He is also the former chief curator of the Design Museum. A writer and curator, he has produced numerous high-profile exhibitions and publishing projects. In 2012, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. He is a regular speaker at universities and conferences around the world, and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Guardian, e-flux, and numerous art and design journals. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Radical Cities (Verso, 2014) and More than Human: Making with the Living World (the Design Museum, 2025). He is also the editor of Future Observatory Journal.
Abstract
Designing With and For the Living World
Design is critical to the green transition, and yet within the dominant conceptual frameworks of ‘sustainability’ and ‘net zero’ its impact will always be limited. According to these logics, design is less a medium for imagination than a means of damage limitation. It is reduced to reducing: shaving off increments of carbon, plastic, and waste without rethinking the systems that produce them. Future Observatory, the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition, funds and supports such work, and incremental change is urgent. But, as the design theorist Arturo Escobar argues, the climate crisis is not just a carbon crisis but a crisis of storytelling. In line with his assertion that we need to transition from one story of the world to another, an important facet of Future Observatory’s work is to explore alternative narratives.
Central to those narratives is the belief that design will have to shift from being a human-centric discipline to one that works with and for landscapes, ecosystems, and other species. More-than-human design is a challenge to contemporary practice, indeed to the very definition of design as we know it. But if the Anthropocene has made anything clear, it is that we live in a time when human interests have to be tempered with the interests of the rest of the living world. What does it mean to design not just for ourselves but for other species and for the health of natural systems? What does it mean to design with and for the living world?
