Symbiotic Design Academy

As a way of thinking about design in a more harmonious relationship with its environment, this document proposes an approach from the world of biology, specifically, from the work of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, who developed the concept of Autopoiesis, which initiated a new paradigm in the definition of what characterizes living beings. For them, autopoietic systems are those that create, reproduce, and repair their own boundaries, components, and organization.

It is well known that design is a discipline that has been specializing and concentrating on increasingly narrow aspects of the phenomena it deals with. He self-imposes partial visions of his actions and his environment and, therefore, has been losing the capacity for holistic observation and analysis that he once had. For this reason, a bibliographical review and an international survey were carried out in search of evidence that would allow characterizing its borders, components and organization. This allowed the design to be illuminated to be understood as an autopoietic system. In this process, seven essential components were identified in the observed tests, and their organization gives rise to a systemic design framework; These components are: Human component or the referential dimension, Transitional component or the time dimension, Allopoietic component or the physical dimension, Operational component or the procedural dimension, Observational component or the cybernetic dimension, Teleological component or the causal dimension and the Relational component or the spatial dimension.

This new organization allows design to define clear disciplinary limits, regulating its response within those parameters, in order to guarantee continuity in its operation, through the generation of a production that is integrated into its ecological niche. A deep understanding of design guarantees sustainability in your actions.