Design for the Polycene

The idea of the Polycene emerged from our work on nuclear security. Following the successful completion of Phase 1 in November 2021, the Horizon 2045 collaborative embarked on Phase 2, conducting planning activities in early 2022, and completing the work in fall 2023. The focus of Center for Complexity’s work was on running design studios to support a body of research called Rules of the Road for the Anthropocene. In our proposal, we wrote, “To thrive in the Anthropocene, we need to develop the new norms, values, institutions, and behaviors necessary to manage global challenges and existential threats—nuclear weapons among them—and solve for how to cooperate at planet-scale.”

To embark on this effort, we expanded our network of collaborators beyond the nuclear security space. We engaged with Politics for Tomorrow and Dark Matter Labs in their work on accelerating institutional responses to climate change through the 10×100 network. We quickly became dissatisfied with “Anthropocene” as a term for the era. It became clear that a term which puts anthropos at the center extends the crisis. We sought instead to speak and think in terms of the planet. We are using “Polycene” to evoke a geological epoch where stewardship replaces dominion, and mastery is redefined as a balanced coexistence with the natural world. It encourages a multiplicity of approaches, ethical considerations, and community engagements to address the complex challenges ahead.

A series of studios and workshops with a planetary network of collaborators from government, academics, and the world of design led to a “Draft Design Manual for the Polycene” which we have produced and published as a website at polycene.design. It includes documentation of the briefings and activities that were used to deliver the studios, the outcomes of the work by studio participants, a series of synthesizing essays that explain the thinking and methods we’ve developed, as well as a set of new activities which will be applicable to project teams, stakeholders, and organizations seeking to tackle these questions.

This material has served as a body of work to spark further conversation, thinking, and creation within and without RISD. Two RISD studio courses brought students into this emerging research, as we asked students to wrestle with the ideas and translate them into designs, while Gateways to the Polycene, an exhibition held at 20 Washington Place in the fall of 2023 invited RISD Faculty and Staff to respond to the themes with new artwork.

Explore our evolving work at polycene.design