Languaging Change from Within; Can We Metadesign Biodiversity?

In reflecting upon the serious and ongoing depletions in biological diversity, this paper calls upon world leaders to collaborate with ‘design thinkers’ [1-3], and other innovators, in addressing major environmental issues. This might mean intervening in new ways to change social paradigms, by tackling the issue on many levels, simultaneously. However, as designers are not trained to work with issues of such complexity the paper discusses the development of a more self-reflexive, comprehensive and integrated mode of design that it refers to as ‘metadesign’ [4]. By reflecting upon design, biodiversity and evolution we hope to develop metadesign techniques that are more in accord with ecological principles. The paper describes a process called ‘languaging’ (verb) that enables metadesigners to find hitherto unnoticed opportunities whilst contributing to the team-building process.