Sensitive to power differentials and the responsibility that this entails, Martin Avila develops the notion of alter-natives, a concept that exposes the alterity of artificial things and the potential of these things to participate in the sustainment of natural environments. He proposes a design practice that encompasses humans, artificial things and other-than-human species in a 'poetics of relating', and provides methods that support the rewilding necessary for maintaining cultural and biological diversity and the stabilization of planetary dynamics. The book features real-life project case studies that illustrate some of the political-ecological implications of an ecocentric paradigm, which can help us to imagine alternative modes of relating to local environments and alternative modes of inter-species cohabitation.
Avoiding dualistic thinking and the dichotomies harmful-benefit, construction-destruction, natural-artificial and life-death, Avila pursues the work of caring for how our mattering through design can become constructive in creating more-than-human ecologies.