“Down to earth”: From anthropocentric to de-anthropocentric design paradigm

Throughout the history of design, designers have always shouldered the responsibility of creating ideas and actions for the ideal life of human beings (Zhang, 2021). Design has always been an important medium for human beings to build and communicate an ideal world. The anthropocentric paradigm regards humankind (including designers) as the primary actor and the most central element of the world’s existence; however, this has led the world into total disorder and anomie (instability). Human activities have greatly impacted the Earth’s ecosystem which has caused climate change, leading to fundamental dilemmas such as global warming, hunger, wars, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic that has (by March 2022) infected over 470 million people (WHO, 2022). The Earth is gradually becoming unable to provide healthy and sustainable habitats for human beings (Kupers & ARTEM, 2017). In the face of an anthropocentric dilemma, design has the responsibility and obligation to stand up and provide actionable guidance for human ideals and the future. Therefore, it is urgent to change the existing way of life and adjust the usual “people-centred” way of thinking and values. The Anthropocene offers us an opportunity to recognise human material dependence and vulnerability and rethink the relationship between human beings, the world, and the Earth. Because we are currently living in a time defined by environmental, geopolitical, and socio-economic crises, based on the “down-to-earth” approach proposed by Bruno Latour (2018), this paper presents arguments and design cases that echo the “de-anthropocentric” design direction. We look at design approaches that try to understand how nature interacts with human beings rather than how humans exist within an ecosystem. We primarily aim to break the positioning of humans at the centre and their needs as the scale and value judgment standard, and bring non-human existence, such as the natural environment and other species, into the new design framework. Through the idea of “de-anthropocentric” as the basic consensus, we highlight the need to revise the relationship between people and things, reconstruct the relationship between people and things, people and the world, and people and the Earth, and provide new ideas for realising the design ideal of passing through and adapting to the Anthropocene.