Torin Hopkins, PhD

HCI & Interfaces · Instruments & Making

Knitting with Unknown Trees

A more-than-human design pictorial: knitting as a material inquiry into the “unknown” trees of a municipal tree dataset.

DOI

A design research pictorial that explores other ways of knowing urban trees. Starting from a municipal tree dataset, we focused on the “unknown” trees, entries left unclassified through error, decay, or absence, and used knitting as a material inquiry into what fixed knowledge systems leave out.

Approach

Urban trees are critical for ecosystems, yet they are increasingly shaped by technologies such as GIS, IoT sensors, and AI diagnostics that put their utility first. Knitting let us foreground nonhuman agencies and relational entanglements, and question normative design practices through a series of reflective shifts and compromises that aimed to amplify nonhuman participation.

Highlights

  • Insights into fostering alternative, relational engagements with urban ecologies.
  • Reflections on surfacing and working with agentic capacities, with guidance for other design researchers.
  • An argument for fragmented approaches that embrace complicity and complexity in more-than-human design.

Publications

  1. Knitting with Unknown Trees: Assembling a More-than-Human Practice

    Doenja Oogjes, Ege Kökel, Netta Ofer, Hsiang-Lin Kuo, Jasmijn Vugts, Troy Nachtigall, and Torin Hopkins

    ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS), pp. 119–134, 2025.

    DOI