Design Collaboration and Exaptation in a Habitat Restoration Project

This paper reports on a collaborative, practice-based design research project focused on habitat restoration. An architect, a conservation biologist, and a digital designer worked together to develop an artificial habitat structure for an urban nature reserve in Canberra, Australia. Through a process of reflective analysis, we characterize this collaboration as a productive alliance of diverse skills and divergent perspectives that required responsiveness, improvisation, and a willingness to work outside disciplinary norms. We observe the importance of divergent but overlapping frames within the collaboration and design outcomes, which appropriated resources across contexts to serve multiple functions. In response, we propose a conceptual frame that draws on the concept of exaptation—an evolutionary process in which existing forms acquire new adaptive functions—to account for this tendency. We argue that an exaptive perspective has value beyond this case study, offering a useful way to reframe contemporary design expertise and authorship while also enabling us to better address a more-than-human world.