Tracing Coexistence

On 3 June 2026, the workshop and field trip “Fields of Coexistence” took place at the HfG Offenbach. The event was funded by the green.office.fonds (HfG) and offered an experimental approach to understanding the campus as a shared multispecies habitat. The workshop was led by Susanne Wieland (research associate in Design Theory / Bieling, HfG Offenbach) and invited participants to shift attention toward the often overlooked forms of life that coexist with human activity on campus.

Participants collectively explored the HfG grounds, observing and documenting the diverse organisms inhabiting the site. Using magnifying glasses, binoculars, and microscopes, we traced micro-habitats, material interactions, and ecological patterns spanning plants, insects, birds, and spontaneous vegetation. The campus emerged as a dynamic ecosystem—one shaped not only by human design, but equally by non-human agencies continuously negotiating space and resources.

After the outdoor exploration, the collected observations were brought back into the studio environment for documentation and analytical processing. Images, samples, and notes were organized, compared, and interpreted, allowing relationships between different life forms and built infrastructures to become more legible. This transition from field observation to analytical reflection emphasized the entanglement of artistic, scientific, and design-based modes of inquiry.

More-than-human Perspectives

In a concluding discussion, participants reflected on the complex interdependencies between human and non-human organisms and the constructed environments they share. Key questions included how different species inhabit and transform artificial spaces, and how design practices might respond to these multispecies entanglements. The conversation drew on frameworks such as more-than-human thinking and multispecies perspectives, as developed by scholars such as Donna Haraway and Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing.

The workshop, is embedded in the broader research and teaching project “Sympoietic Design – Designing Coexistence” (SoSe 2026) led by Prof. Dr. Tom Bieling, situating the field trip within an ongoing exploration of design as a practice of co-creation across human and non-human systems.

Photos: Green.Office & S. Wieland