Arachne 13: A design research collection

The approach we followed for Arachne 13 was to design a collective research publication that could hold the complexity of thirteen different inquiries into what it means to design on a damaged planet. The book resists linear narratives and fixed roles, weaving together diverse perspectives into a layered and dynamic whole.

The starting point was a shared concern: How can we reimagine the role of the designer when the systems we inherit are no longer sustainable or just? Rather than presenting solutions, the publication frames design as a practice of re-making relationships —between people, materials, and worlds.

Through an editorial structure built on rhythm, fragmentation, and interconnection, Arachne 13 threads research from embodied encounters, speculative gestures, and situated reflections. Some contributions examine food politics and material extraction; others move through themes of illegibility, refusal, neurodivergence, cuteness, contamination, or ritual. Each stands on its own, yet together they form a web that is interdependent, messy, and alive.

This is not a catalogue of polished outcomes, but an act of collectively inhabiting complexity. The book invites readers to move non-linearly, tracing threads, unweaving, and re-threading meaning as they go. Knowledge here is not fixed, but spun, suspended, and held in tension.

Arachne 13 is both a publication and a proposition: a glimpse of what design might become when it begins by listening, and dares to stay with the trouble.

Graphic design in collaboration with Renan Zarpellon Gago.