Designing Like a Forest

Abstract

“The word for world is forest,” writes Ursula K. Le Guin, condensing the idea that world and forest are not distinct entities but ways of naming the same web of living relationships. In permaculture and syntropic agroforestry, the forest serves as an organizational paradigm in which fertility, resilience, and coexistence emerge from relationships among species, matter, and temporalities rather than from external interventions. Drawing on an ecosophical perspective that integrates environmental, social, and mental dimensions, this article investigates how design can translate the logics of interspecies soil care into principles for wearables and contemporary jewelry. The research combines Research through Design and Soma Design with a situated mapping of soil-care initiatives across Italy, qualitative interviews, and material experimentation. The recurring configurations that emerged from a Reflexive Thematic Analysis are subsequently translated into four ecosophical design principles. These principles are then explored through Seeds++, a system of objects and wearable artifacts acting as relational mediators between body, soil, and ecological processes: making the slow and invisible dynamics of soil accountable, sustaining embodied learning, and fostering shared responsibility. The article argues that contemporary jewelry design, due to its proximity to the body and its intrinsically relational nature, offers a privileged field for experimenting with forms of care that traverse the boundaries between subject, technology, and more-than-human ecologies.