CALL FOR PAPERS #28: The Planetary Condition: Designs, Coexistences, and Care to Reimagine Habitability

 

GUEST EDITORS:

Martín Tironi | Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile | martin.tironi@uc.cl

Juan G. Montalván Lume | Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Lancaster University | jgmontalvan@pucp.edu.pe

 

Submission Deadline: June 27, 2025
Expected publication date: January 2026

 

The global climate crisis has brought to the forefront the urgent need to rethink and reorient how we inhabit and coexist on the planet. The consequences of humanity’s role as a geological agent are well known: environmental degradation, desertification, droughts, ice melts, floods, ecosystem loss, species extinction, soil and water contamination, rising temperatures, the spread of global pandemics, and, as a result, a destabilization of democratic systems.

It is impossible to consider the planet’s metabolism without accounting for human interventions in the configuration of life, particularly those shaped by the impact of technological expansion and capitalist modes of organization. These dynamics, characteristic of the Technocene, have blurred the modern divide between nature and culture, signaling the transition to a postnatural era (Costa, 2021; Hui, 2024; Latour, 2017).

Design has played a key role in expanding the anthropocentric logics that have shaped our relationship with the planet, acting as a (de)futurizer and material articulator of specific conceptions of 'the Earth' and its inhabitants.

Embedded in the narrative of modernization (Latour, 2017), design has contributed to the reproduction of a vision that advances by rendering invisible and subordinating all forms of otherness, while simultaneously intensifying overconsumption and degradation of the biosphere through extractivist dynamics (Fry & Nocek, 2020; Vazquez, 2017).

As various authors have noted (Descola, 2013; Escobar, 2018; Escobar et al., 2024; Haraway, 2016; Latour, 2018; Morizot, 2020), we are facing a time where human life on the planet is not only threatened by the climate crisis, but also requires the creation of new paradigms of thought, attention, and relationality, which―in turn―redefine modern-Western conceptions of 'design' and 'Earth' (Montalvan Lume et al., 2024). The task, therefore, is to rethink our relationship with the planet, moving beyond its conception as a mere passive and inexhaustible receptacle of human action.

At the same time, this task involves expanding our understanding of design (Tironi, 2023) and recognizing it as a political-cultural practice that requires a cross-disciplinary dialogue with other epistemologies, forms of relating, and ways of imagining and building futures. This dialogue must incorporate the knowledge-structures and perspectives of the diverse cultures that coexist on the planet (Montalvan Lume, 2023).

This special issue seeks to generate a debate on what is implied by and required for planetary habitability and coexistence, recognizing other modes of relationality and intervention in and with the planet. An emerging theme addresses the advent of a moment of deep planetary interdependencies (Clark & Szerszynski, 2020; Spivak, 2003). We mobilize the notion of the planetary not as a return to homogenizing globalization, but as an invitation to explore what it means to design, create, or intervene in a context of profound vulnerability.

The irreversible alteration of biophysical processes on a planetary scale not only redefines the conditions of habitability but also challenges us to rethink our forms of relating and coexisting. In this context, human action must consider the interconnections between different temporalities and spatialities, understanding that human and terrestrial processes do not operate in isolation, but co-evolve in a network of relationships that shape presents and nourish futures (Bratton, 2019; Bridle, 2022; Clark & Szerszynski, 2020).

Furthermore, this planetary condition evidences that spaces beyond traditional urban landscapes―such as transcontinental routes, remote areas, resource extraction sites, and even environments commonly perceived as 'natural', such as oceans, forests, deserts, and the atmosphere―are being incorporated into a 'global operational urban landscape' (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015; Brenner & Schmid, 2015). This phenomenon blurs the modern representations that drew apparent boundaries between a 'human civilization' and an 'immutable nature' external to it, giving way to new socionatural and planetary conceptions that recognize the deep relationality between the geological, the biological, the human, and the computational.

Building on these insights, this special issue invites us to reimagine practices, concepts, and interventions that foster new modes of relationality, transcending the boundaries of traditional design and adopting transdisciplinary and transgeographical perspectives. The assumptions underlying modern design must be challenged to address the new planetary condition, creating more habitable worlds in collaboration with diverse species and forms of intelligence.

We seek to explore the implications―both for doing and for thinking and feeling―of planetary entanglements and struggles for co-habitability, through contemporary research, practices, and creations that address the question of habitability, care, and coexistence.

The invitation is open to contributions from the fields of design research, environmental humanities, critical theory, art, geography, transcultural studies, new materialism, and local and ancestral knowledge. Contributions may be guided by the themes and questions outlined here, offering ideas that foster transdisciplinary and transgeographical dialogue. Focus areas include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

● Transcultural approaches: What sensibilities, designs, prototypes, or other modes of relationality do transcultural explorations offer for understanding the interconnection between humans, technology, and nature? What alternative visions to 'the Earth' do diverse cultures provide?
● Towards planetary computing: How can technical and digital innovations be harmoniously integrated into the planetary metabolism and contribute to the regeneration of ecosystems?
● Reconceptualizations on the planetary condition: How do planetary entanglements, along with biological, geological, and ecological processes, reconfigure our approaches to design and research?
● Approaches and methods for multispecies coexistence: How can design or other modes of relationality create the conditions for sustainable coexistence between humans and the countless forms of life?
● Aesthetics for planetary co-habitability: How can visual narratives reconfigure our perception of the agency of other species and environments? What relationships exist between aesthetics, affections, and ethics in design (or beyond design) for multispecies cohabitation or planetary coexistence?

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES (KEY POINTS)
Read the complete instructions for authors at https://revistadisena.uc.cl/index.php/Disena/original_1

Submissions must include:
— An English or Spanish language contribution of 3,500- 4,000 words, with references in APA Style (7th ed.).
N.B. The text should be anonymized for blind peer review. Please, upload Word documents (not PDF).
— An abstract (140 words max.).
— Five keywords
— A personal profile of each author (150 words max.).
After peer review, corrections should be made as of August 2025. The edition will be published in January 2026.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Diseña is a peer-reviewed, bilingual, and Scopus-indexed journal published by the Escuela de Diseño of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Diseña welcomes research in all areas of Design. Its specific aim is to promote critical thought on methodologies, methods, practices, and tools of research and project work.
www.revistadisena.uc.cl

References

Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2015). Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12105

Bratton, B. (2019). The Terraforming. Strelka.

Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban? City, 19(2-3), 151-182. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712

Bridle, J. (2022). Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Clark, N., & Szerszynski, B. (2020). Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences. Polity Press.

Costa, F. (2021). Tecnoceno: Algoritmos, biohackers y nuevas formas de vida. Taurus.

Descola, P. (2013). Beyond Nature and Culture. University of Chicago Press.

Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press.

Escobar, A., Osterweil, M., & Sharma, K. (2024). Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human. Bloomsbury.

Fry, T., & Nocek, A. (2020). Design in Crisis: New Worlds, Philosophies and Practices. Routledge.

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.

Hui, Y. (2024). Machine and Sovereignty: For a Planetary Thinking. University of Minnesota Press.

Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press.

Latour, B. (2018). Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press.

Montalvan Lume, J. G. (2023). Decolonial, Systemic, and Critical Studies in Design and Design Research. DRSelects. https://www.designresearchsociety.org:443/articles/drselects-juan-montalvan-lume-on-decolonial-systemic-and-critical-studies-in-design-and-design-research

Montalvan Lume, J. G., Arteaga Benavides, L. A., Corrales Ardiles, J. C., Vásquez Cerda, C. A., & Cornejo, J. (2024). Pluriversality on Earth and Beyond: Opening the Field of Critical Interplanetary Design within the Design Discipline. DRS Biennial Conference Series. http://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1712

Morizot, B. (2020). Manières d’être vivant: Enquêtes sur la vie à travers nous. Actes Sud.

Spivak, G. C. (2003). Death of a Discipline. Columbia University Press.

Tironi, M. (2023). How to Become Terrestrial: Design for Planetary Habitability. In H. Palmarola, E. Medina, & P. Alonso (Eds.), How to Design a Revolution: The Chilean Road to Design (pp. 274-293). Lars Müller.

Vazquez, R. (2017). Precedence, Earth and the Anthropocene: Decolonizing Design. Design Philosophy Papers, 15(1), 77-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/14487136.2017.1303130