Designing for a Shared Reality: What is a Multispecies Approach to Sanitation?
Designing for a Shared Reality: What is a Multispecies Approach to Sanitation?
By: Kory Russel
At a Venetian Palace overlooking the grand canal, an unexpected exhibit highlighted a universal truth—every living being, from emperors to insects, must excrete waste. This display, “Designing for the Intimate Shared Reality of All Species” exhibition, part of the University of Oregon’s College of Design Transpecies Design Exhibit at the 2023 Venice Biennale presented by Dean Adrian Parr. The exhibit highlighted the interconnectedness of human and non-human life within sanitation systems, focusing on the environmental and social impacts of various waste management approaches.
Wait, did you say this happened in 2023? Why is this being written about now? That is a fantastic point, let me explain. We also created a companion website, so that anyone that missed the nine-month event in Venice could experience it virtually anytime they wanted.
First, I (Kory Russel) didn’t create this work alone, two graduate students at the University of Oregon, Bjørn Kristensen and Audrey Rycewicz were equal participants in this process. The work would not have happened without their enthusiasm and creativity. When the call for entries first came, there was a consensus that any exhibition on multispecies design should include some sort of fecal representation, especially if it were to be displayed in a Venetian Palace. Again, you may be asking yourself, why? All humans, regardless of age, gender, race, rank, wealth, or power must excrete bodily waste on a regular basis. Humans and all other species share this intimate reality. We want to frame human waste not as a disgusting problem to be hidden, but as a shared experience connecting humans to all other living things. This perspective challenges traditional views on sanitation, urging a shift in thinking about waste as a problem to waste as a potential resource.
There is a global sanitation crisis, where over a billion people lack access to improved sanitation and 44% of the household wastewater globally is discharged without safe treatment. Given you are reading a blog post on the PHLUSH website, you are likely aware that without sanitation infrastructure, human waste is often emptied into rivers, estuaries, and oceans. The high concentrations of nutrients cause eutrophication, dead zones, and toxic algal blooms resulting in severe impacts for aquatic life. Informal urban settlements and rural villages must confront a lack of toilets, open defecation, and poor maintenance of pit latrines and septic tanks. These issues endanger the health of humans (e.g., diarrheal diseases, cholera, leptospirosis) and the environment (e.g., water contamination, eutrophication,dead zones, and methane emissions).
However, the impacts of the sanitation crisis are not solely a human issue, there are significant multi-species entanglements. The recognition that sanitation practices directly impact and entangle numerous species is key to a broader contextual understanding of just how all-encompassing the sanitation crisis really is. Sanitation processes necessarily involve other species who are often backgrounded—or remain largely unexamined entities—within typical considerations. Addressing the global sanitation crisis requires moving beyond an anthropocentric perspective to consider the well-being of other living things.
For this reason, the exhibition highlights how inadequate sanitation harms both humans and non-human animals such as fish, mollusks, marine mammals, and even rats. While rats are often rightly blamed for disease spread, both humans and rats are harmed by the presence of untreated sewage and run-off. Thus, there is a need for approaches to sanitation that are inclusive of and benefit “a diversity of species.”
Several good examples of improving conditions for other species can be seen in the resource recovery techniques highlighted by the exhibition. Waste recovered from updated approaches to sanitation globally including sewers, pit latrines, septic tanks as well as the less common container-based sanitation (CBS), can convert environmental pollutants into valuable resources. Sanitation should be circular. The exhibition promotes the idea of resource recovery from human waste through various technologies, including soil amendments (compost), fuel (biofuel), NPK nutrients (fertilizer), agricultural feed (black soldier fly larvae), carbon sequestration (biochar), and water (wastewater reuse). The most obvious benefit to other species from resource recovery is the massive reduction in environmental contamination, eutrophication of waterways, fish kills, and aquatic dead zones. However, if you look deeper, you find examples like Sanivation in Kenya, which is turning agricultural waste mixed with treated fecal waste into solid biofuel which helps to reduce deforestation for fuel.
In conclusion, the piece calls for a paradigm shift in how we approach sanitation. The interconnectedness of human and non-human well-being presents innovative solutions like CBS that promote sustainability, resource recovery, and multi-specie benefits. The Intimate Shared Reality of All Species exhibition encourages a reevaluation of our relationship with waste and the environment, urging us to consider the impact of our waste on all living things. To explore these topics, head over to the exhibit website.
Image 1: The rendered human waste pillar displayed in Venice which was part of a larger exhibit on transpecies design.
Image 2: Transpecies Design, College of Design at University of Oregon. Curated by Adrian Parr. Time Space Existence 2023, Palazzo Bembo. Photo credits Federico Vespignani. The pillar to the far right is the “Designing for the Intimate Shared Reality of All Species” piece.
Image 3: Within the peekaboo tunnel of the physical pillar in Venice, there were several items displayed including six vessels containing products such as compost, biofuel, fertilizer, black soldier fly larvae, biochar, and water derived from human waste and wastewater.
By: Kory Russel
At a Venetian Palace overlooking the grand canal, an unexpected exhibit highlighted a universal truth—every living being, from emperors to insects, must excrete waste. This display, “Designing for the Intimate Shared Reality of All Species” exhibition, part of the University of Oregon’s College of Design Transpecies Design Exhibit at the 2023 Venice Biennale presented by Dean Adrian Parr. The exhibit highlighted the interconnectedness of human and non-human life within sanitation systems, focusing on the environmental and social impacts of various waste management approaches.
Wait, did you say this happened in 2023? Why is this being written about now? That is a fantastic point, let me explain. We also created a companion website, so that anyone that missed the nine-month event in Venice could experience it virtually anytime they wanted.
First, I (Kory Russel) didn’t create this work alone, two graduate students at the University of Oregon, Bjørn Kristensen and Audrey Rycewicz were equal participants in this process. The work would not have happened without their enthusiasm and creativity. When the call for entries first came, there was a consensus that any exhibition on multispecies design should include some sort of fecal representation, especially if it were to be displayed in a Venetian Palace. Again, you may be asking yourself, why? All humans, regardless of age, gender, race, rank, wealth, or power must excrete bodily waste on a regular basis. Humans and all other species share this intimate reality. We want to frame human waste not as a disgusting problem to be hidden, but as a shared experience connecting humans to all other living things. This perspective challenges traditional views on sanitation, urging a shift in thinking about waste as a problem to waste as a potential resource.
There is a global sanitation crisis, where over a billion people lack access to improved sanitation and 44% of the household wastewater globally is discharged without safe treatment. Given you are reading a blog post on the PHLUSH website, you are likely aware that without sanitation infrastructure, human waste is often emptied into rivers, estuaries, and oceans. The high concentrations of nutrients cause eutrophication, dead zones, and toxic algal blooms resulting in severe impacts for aquatic life. Informal urban settlements and rural villages must confront a lack of toilets, open defecation, and poor maintenance of pit latrines and septic tanks. These issues endanger the health of humans (e.g., diarrheal diseases, cholera, leptospirosis) and the environment (e.g., water contamination, eutrophication,dead zones, and methane emissions).
However, the impacts of the sanitation crisis are not solely a human issue, there are significant multi-species entanglements. The recognition that sanitation practices directly impact and entangle numerous species is key to a broader contextual understanding of just how all-encompassing the sanitation crisis really is. Sanitation processes necessarily involve other species who are often backgrounded—or remain largely unexamined entities—within typical considerations. Addressing the global sanitation crisis requires moving beyond an anthropocentric perspective to consider the well-being of other living things.
For this reason, the exhibition highlights how inadequate sanitation harms both humans and non-human animals such as fish, mollusks, marine mammals, and even rats. While rats are often rightly blamed for disease spread, both humans and rats are harmed by the presence of untreated sewage and run-off. Thus, there is a need for approaches to sanitation that are inclusive of and benefit “a diversity of species.”
Several good examples of improving conditions for other species can be seen in the resource recovery techniques highlighted by the exhibition. Waste recovered from updated approaches to sanitation globally including sewers, pit latrines, septic tanks as well as the less common container-based sanitation (CBS), can convert environmental pollutants into valuable resources. Sanitation should be circular. The exhibition promotes the idea of resource recovery from human waste through various technologies, including soil amendments (compost), fuel (biofuel), NPK nutrients (fertilizer), agricultural feed (black soldier fly larvae), carbon sequestration (biochar), and water (wastewater reuse). The most obvious benefit to other species from resource recovery is the massive reduction in environmental contamination, eutrophication of waterways, fish kills, and aquatic dead zones. However, if you look deeper, you find examples like Sanivation in Kenya, which is turning agricultural waste mixed with treated fecal waste into solid biofuel which helps to reduce deforestation for fuel.
In conclusion, the piece calls for a paradigm shift in how we approach sanitation. The interconnectedness of human and non-human well-being presents innovative solutions like CBS that promote sustainability, resource recovery, and multi-specie benefits. The Intimate Shared Reality of All Species exhibition encourages a reevaluation of our relationship with waste and the environment, urging us to consider the impact of our waste on all living things. To explore these topics, head over to the exhibit website.
Image 1: The rendered human waste pillar displayed in Venice which was part of a larger exhibit on transpecies design.
Image 2: Transpecies Design, College of Design at University of Oregon. Curated by Adrian Parr. Time Space Existence 2023, Palazzo Bembo. Photo credits Federico Vespignani. The pillar to the far right is the “Designing for the Intimate Shared Reality of All Species” piece.
Image 3: Within the peekaboo tunnel of the physical pillar in Venice, there were several items displayed including six vessels containing products such as compost, biofuel, fertilizer, black soldier fly larvae, biochar, and water derived from human waste and wastewater.