Holding Surplus House and Bauhaus Correspondence

Abstract

Seasonal shifts are affected by climate change, causing challenges for multispecies inhabitants in their ecosystems. How can the designed living environment be turned into a site for multispecies flourishing? This collection modestly proposes seasonal designing to link design processes with seasonal changes. Seasonal designing entails working located with the resources at hand, treading lightly, asking for help and scaling deep and out from the nearby household to planetary household. Householding through difference is a performative and caring community economies approach for socio-ecological change that prioritises the flourishing of livelihoods over economic growth. The stories build on design experiments in, around and beyond a Tiny House on Wheels, that has become centrepiece in the artistic research project Holding Surplus House. Together , they demonstrate that these design-driven responses integrating research, education and collaboration with citizens in everyday life provide ways to gain embodied experience of listening to, reflecting on, understanding, and acting in the current polycrisis.