What might our future urban environments look like if we design with, rather than despite, local non-human inhabitants? During Dutch Design Week 2023, Land-Ally created Will Water Want, a series of tools for the Dommel River in Eindhoven to communicate through. 

The city municipality commissioned Land-Ally to explore the possibilities for the Dommel river to become a stakeholder — to have a voice — in how to develop a new urban area around Eindhoven’s central station.

Aluminium pipes suspended from a bridge enable people to listen to the sounds the water makes as it flows past. Through these design objects, passersby were invited to reflect on water as an entity in its own right and seek connection with this more-than-human neighbour.

This recording is from one of the pipes, capturing the vibrations and voice of the Dommel.

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Field recording made by Linsey Rendell as part of the Creative Voices residency with Dutch Design Week in 2023. Explore the final project: https://ddw.nl/en/news/879/gardening-towards-the-symbiocene

Photo by Marte Mei, Land-Ally.

Learn more about Will Water Want: https://www.martemei.com/will-water-want-pt-ii-2/

Voice of the Dommel

What if everything we design is an opportunity for reciprocity and a contribution to the systems that support us? During Dutch Design Week 2023, Land-Ally created Will Water Want, a series of tools for the Dommel River in Eindhoven to communicate through.

'The project was trying to open the doorway for people within the municipality to acknowledge a river as an entity that can make decisions,' spatial designer Marte Mei says.

What does design that is led by processes of multispecies collaboration look, feel, and sound like? The answer to ‘how might you/me/we begin’ might be inter-being where we are, in place, in community. Giving attention to non-human entities increases our sensitivity to who is here — and our possible impact on them.

This field recording was made alongside the Dommel in Eindhoven, close to Land-Ally's Will Water Want installations. It listens to some of the entities that comprise the land-community of this specific site.

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Field recording made by Linsey Rendell as part of the Creative Voices residency with Dutch Design Week in 2023. Explore the final project: https://ddw.nl/en/news/879/gardening-towards-the-symbiocene

Photo by Marte Mei, Land-Ally

Learn more about the Land-Ally methodology: https://www.land-ally.com/methodology

Listening to the land-community: Dommel, Eindhoven

What does it mean to possess? During Dutch Design Week 2023, Jimin Hong created Possession to Nature, a video and participatory installation where people are invited to draw spaces and boundaries into salt. On the last day of the exhibition, Jimin pours water onto the salt, washing away the traces and raising questions about the meaning of such behaviours.

This recording was made on-site with Jimin engaging with the salt.  

During the week, Jimin learned that the project changes with the locality. When exhibited in Finland, the salt was dry and sand-like. In Eindhoven, it was heavy and wet, absorbing moisture from the atmosphere and the rain — the material mutating with the surrounding context.

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Field recording made by Linsey Rendell as part of the Creative Voices residency with Dutch Design Week in 2023. Explore the final project: https://ddw.nl/en/news/879/gardening-towards-the-symbiocene

Photo by Jimin Hong.

Learn more about Possession to Nature: https://ddw.nl/en/programme/10454/possession-to-nature

Possession to Nature

What does Dutch Design Week sound like beyond the human?

Listening and giving attention to non-human entities increases our sensitivity to who is here — and our possible impact on near and far land-communities.

This field recording was made in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2023. It listens to some of the (more vocal) more-than-human entities that comprised the community that week.

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Who is here? 

Birds are here. The Dommel is here. Possibly no pollinators — too wet, too cold. Sunshine turned up for a little while. Rain was uncommonly present. Sheep, chickens, geese, cosmos, eggplant, amaranth, and rosemary are here. The last summer zucchinis join almost-expired sunflowers.

Salt is here too. It’s in the air and the ground. Fishes from oceans near and far. Wood is here — how far has it travelled? Wool from Rotterdam’s sheep is here. Mycelium is here, conspiring with household waste and hemp to form bio-bricks and living coffins. 

Cadmium and lithium are here. The EVs that chaperone us around, dry and warm out of the wind and the rain, need metals from lands that are not here, but demonstrate the interconnectedness of this land, and theirs, and how the impacts of our needs are never contained to just us, just here, just now. Cadmium is here in other ways too. With zinc, lead and copper, it is bound to the sediment of the Dommel. They’ve been there for more than 200 years, pollution flowing from factories into land and water, affecting worms, grasses, birds, badgers, cows — and people. Human pollution, polluting humans.

Asking who is here quietens the human, so we might design and live in ways that enable multispecies flourishing.

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Field recording made by Linsey Rendell as part of the Creative Voices residency with Dutch Design Week in 2023. Explore the final project: https://ddw.nl/en/news/879/gardening-towards-the-symbiocene

Photo of a rain-permeable carpark in Strijp-S, where dandelions live too.

Listening to the land-community: Dutch Design Week 2023

During Dutch Design Week 2023, spatial designer Marte Mei van Haaster created Will Water Want, a series of tools for Eindhoven's Dommel River to communicate through.

In this conversation, we discuss post-growth pleasure, normalising non-human entities as stakeholders in placemaking, and the 'how' of multispecies collaboration.

‘I try to see the role of the designer — or the human in general — as one of allyship,’ Marte says. ‘So, how do you relate to a river? How do you give it space to be itself or to be heard without anthropomorphising?’ 

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Recording made by Linsey Rendell as part of the Creative Voices residency with Dutch Design Week in 2023. Explore the final project: https://ddw.nl/en/news/879/gardening-towards-the-symbiocene

Photo by Studio About Today

Learn more about the Land-Ally methodology: www.land-ally.com/methodology

Interview with Marte Mei, Land-Ally

I spend my time researching, imagining, listening, writing, learning, unlearning, and gardening — to design ways of being and becoming that are gentler for people and the planet.

Field recordings and conversations on designing ecologies and economies.

Linsey Rendell

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