Transitions to Multispecies Futures in the Design Classroom

Sustainability Transitions and Futures is a mandatory course of the Creative Sus-tainability master’s program in the Department of Design of Aalto University de-livered jointly by the co-authors. It aims to provide a basic understanding of how sustainability transitions projects unfold in practice and the ways through which designers can contribute to these projects as part of interdisciplinary teams. For two consecutive years, we focused on multispecies sustainability. We have pro-vided the students with the necessary theoretical and critical lenses through a curated selection of guest lectures from fields including law, philosophy, urban ecology and planning. For the practical part, the students in groups reimagined the Aalto University campus in the year 2050 as a multispecies campus and de-veloped pathways to demonstrate how their visions can become anchors for re-directing campus development plans. This paper reflects on our experience and provides pointers for systems change-related courses to engage with post-anthropocentric future-making.