House of Heat: Materials for Coexistence

<p dir="ltr">Research Background: House of Heat: Materials for Coexistence advances industrial design research into participatory and curatorial practices that activate public engagement for regenerative futures. It draws on Claire Bishop’s Participation (2006) and Ezio Manzini’s Design, When Everybody Designs (2015) to position collective making and gathering as experiential pathways to distributed socio-ecological agency, reflecting debates in CoDesign and the biennial Participatory Design Conference. Building on the ontology developed in Designing Conditions for Coexistence (Cotsaftis et al., Design Studies, 2023), the project expands opportunities to explore regenerative practices by staging exhibition-making as a shared inquiry into coexistence across human and environmental systems. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Contribution: Curated and produced by Cotsaftis in partnership with Williams (UNSW) and D’Sylva (Hyloh), the exhibition brought together design researchers, creative practitioners, and entrepreneurs to enact material-led coexistence. The exhibition operated as both research platform and public action, translating regenerative theory into sensory, performative encounters. It advances industrial design’s participatory approaches by evidencing how curatorial frameworks function as research methods—enabling cultural literacy, collaboration, and social imagination around regenerative practice. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Significance: Commissioned and hosted by MPavilion, Australia’s leading architectural commission and public platform for critical engagement with contemporary design, the project demonstrates excellence in applied research with academic, industry, and civic reach. Supported by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, it attracted around 250 participants and featured contributors including Future reMADE, Hyloh, and Neomatter. It stands as a benchmark for how design research translates regenerative frameworks into participatory, public forms of practice, informing emerging discourse in regenerative design.</p>