An Exploratory More-than-Human Care-Based Framework for Media Architecture

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Burcu Nimet Dumlu, Ismael Rasa, Takatohsi Yoshida, Kouta Minamizawa

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Abstract.

 

Media architecture has traditionally been framed through Human– Computer Interaction (HCI), emphasizing digital transformation in the built environment and focusing on interactive façades, urban installations, and experience pavilions. Recently, more-than-human perspectives have broadened this discourse, highlighting ecological and relational dimensions of design. Building on this shift, this paper advances a care-oriented framework for media architecture, one that approaches care as repair, maintenance, and situated attentiveness across human and nonhuman relations. Four installations from the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 are analyzed through textual, visual, and interview materials to identify agential cuts and intra-actions that reveal distributed agencies and alternative narratives. In discussion, we propose that media itself can extend beyond the digital to include multispecies communication and analog forms of coexistence. This perspective reframes media architecture as an ethical, sustainable, and relational practice grounded in more-than-human care.

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Keywords: More-than-Human, Matters of Care, Alternative Narratives, Agential Realism, Media Architecture