Daphne Kusters - designing an embodied ecology

Daphne is a woman who uses her designer skills and knowledge to bridge people to people and people to nature. Her approach to design is inspiring and refreshing…

I am very excited about following the work of this young talented designer. Daphne Kusters is moving in her approach to design, because you’ll agree with me that design is often a world of its own inhabited by people living in a bubble. Whereas her approach is very much grounded not only in ancestral knowledge but also in a deep observation of the world around her.
I am very happy to bring you a new point of view on what it means to be a designer…

You’ve been a trained designer for 10 years now. What is a designer? And who is Daphne?... I’d love to know how the two intertwine.

Daphne Kusters: I’ve been reflecting upon the term designer and I looked up the definition of the word. Designer means ‘a person who gives a designation to something or to give a purpose to something’, so in theory it can be very broad. At the same time when you look at the world of design, it’s mostly concerned with very materialistic things: like making a cabinet, or a building, or a graphic design, and so on.
So lately I’ve been distancing myself from the term ‘designer’ because I’ve been boxing myself in all these beliefs and preconceptions regarding what design is, what it should be, and what it should do. So I decided to become the most Daphne I can be, because up until now I’ve been dismissing parts of myself to fit the image of a designer.

Now, what is a designer to me? I feel everybody is a designer. After having reconciled with the original meaning of the word, I think it really talks about this creative expression that humans have and it just gives a designation to something to then be created. This term is much more inclusive and broad than what we currently see in our society.

And who is Daphne is a question I’ve been asking myself my whole life. I am creative. I feel deeply connected to Ancient Wisdom and to living in alignment with nature and its laws. I am the type of person who when she walks into a room she sees a wall with apparently random images that I connect to one another with lines and I may look like a crazy woman. But it’s true, I see parallels in so many things that sometimes it becomes confusing. I mean, how do I even start to explain all these connections. If everything is connected, how do I explain it in a simple way? I am a person who really craves connection but who has also experienced a lot of the opposite. At the moment these are the elements that define who I am. 

What would you like to create in the world?

This question brings me back to a time during a breath-work practice when I got a vision, or insight, which said: It doesn’t matter what I create as long as I create connection. Which is a very abstract concept. One way it can manifest is through writing, another way is for example connecting the Dutch dairy industry to people who can teach them herding calls and reconnect the industry to nature in that sense.

It becomes very tangible in the way we design things. I feel design gives shape to so many things, it gives shape to a way of living. The tools that you have also decide the way you cook, right? In the Dutch dairy industry, from the research I did, some of the tools that are used are dehorning irons; nose rings to prevent suckling; calf buckets for the calf to drink from because they cannot drink from their mother. What I see when I look at these tools is a lot of disconnection: the cow cannot express her full essence through them, and so how can we create tools that support a dairy cow in expressing her full essence? 

In the Netherlands, modern day farmers use quads to ride behind the herds of cows to incite them to get back into the stable. However in the past, a pastoral instrument that was used for the same purpose was herding calls. When you confront the two methods you can clearly notice the below-the-surface beliefs: one one side”I don’t trust these cows and actually they’re very annoying because they don’t listen to me”, on the other side “I have a connection with these cows and I trust that when I call them back home, they will come.” 

This is what I’d love to do, in short, take these manifestations that we have in the world that create more disconnection with nature and transform them into manifestations that connect us back to nature. Through the research I did, I’ve spoken to other farmers who instead of cutting the horns of the bulls because they consider them dangerous, they have a way of communicating with these animals through the opening of their jacket… and so I wonder, can we design purposeful jackets that help with the communication and guidance of the bulls instead of using dehorning irons? Of course the world is full of these stories and these more humane solutions, but they are not very well known, usually hidden in small independent isolated farms.
The designs I am creating are very much rooted in solutions that already exist but that need to be perhaps modernized and made available to a wider public. I want to inspire people with other solutions and to show them there is another way in which we respect the being of other creatures as well as our own. 

The thing is, whether one is aware of it or not, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not, how the farmer treats its herd will affect him. And so if he rushes the cows back in the stable with a quad, chances are the stress he’s causing to the animals is the same stress he is causing to himself. 

Tell me about your relationship with your reality… Where you are right now, and also about your relationship with nature.

I believe it’s really important to embody certain principles for myself first, so to better express them in the things I will design. 

I start with observing my own life and lifestyle. It can be an act as simple as going through all my hair products and check what chemicals are used and then research better products. When I start to implement changes in my life that are uncomfortable it then helps me to connect to the point of view of a farmer who resists implementing certain changes for the benefit of the environment and the living beings. 

I see a clear parallel between my own evolution and the way we treat nature, in support of this there’s this quote I love by Andy Goldsworthy ‘We are nature and if you have lost your connection to nature you have lost the connection to yourself”. This means that my own internal processes are the same processes that are happening externally. And so the more I learn to relate to myself, the more I can relate to nature. 

How good are you to yourself?

I think I’m pretty good with myself. I became really good at sitting with myself, contemplating with myself. Sometimes I just sit on the couch and stare into my room because I want to learn how to be with myself and my uncomfortableness. I learned that being good to yourself means to be able to be with yourself. 

I heard you speak of ‘embodied ecology’, what’s that?

I’m very much interested in your point of view because I went to look up the etymology of the word ‘ecology’ (branch of science dealing with the relationship of living things to their environments) and it’s a lot different from the way this term is nonchalantly used at times as a synonym for sustainable living. 

Ok let’s go down this rabbit hole. I looked up the meaning of nature: Oxford Languages defines it as ‘everything except for humans and the man-made’. I mean this explains a lot.

Then I too went to check the meaning of the word ecology, which is the logic/rationality of the eco so nature. Therefore ‘embodied ecology’ to me is the same as the difference between knowledge and wisdom. I perceive ecology as something very rational, it’s the thinking about nature… When I pair it with the term embodiment, I bring that thought process into me and make it mine, I live it instead of thinking about it only. 

Embodied Ecology is ‘you are nature’. 

Then I came across a new term: ecosophy, the combination of eco and sophia, where sophia means wisdom. To me wisdom is when you embody the knowledge of something. 

The big vision I have is to create an “ecosophic” world. A world where we embody nature, where we are nature. This world manifests with the examples of the cows I gave before, and also with knowing about our human body works. 

What I want to say is that when we live in alignment with our human nature, we live in a way that is regenerative instead of degenerative. Thus as a designer, the more I live in accordance with nature and human nature, the more I will create things that support regeneration, I will create designs that support more life. 

I love that and it makes total sense. This way you don’t really stop at designing objects but it can potentially be a seed for designing entirely lifestyles.

Yes. Design is usually concerned with the materials, the shape and it stops at the function it has, right? And nowadays businesses are sort of moving toward creating things that are more in alignment with nature and yet they still create the dehorning iron “but make it circular and environment friendly”. What I put my focus on is kind of beyond that, I go one or two steps further and ask: Ok, now you made it organic and recycled, but how is the function of this thing affecting the user, the one on whom it is used and the environment in which it is placed? Is it regenerative and supporting life and well-being? Or is it degenerative? 

Lastly, what is the place of beauty in your designs?

In my opinion, beauty plays a crucial role in design, even when a design is focused on a concept behind it be it political or ecological.
For many years we’ve just designed objects that didn’t really have a specific story to tell, but had more of function and so the focus was put more on beauty. What we can observe nowadays is the more the focus changes towards the story behind a specific design, the less attention goes to the beauty of that object.

Yet I find beauty extremely important. The effect it has on me is calming and healing. Beauty is what attracts attention and makes people move toward something. The problem is that it’s got this wrong reputation of superficiality, whereas I see it as very profound, moving, and, dare I say, spiritual. But I am confident the balance will return because when you look at nature, beauty is everywhere.

It was actually one of the first things that annoyed me that when we look into the ecological and sustainable design it’s so very stereotyped. Say a company wants to work with nature and market itself as “natural”, the only colours they’d use are greens and the material wood. Until it becomes a trend, when in reality is much bigger than that… it’s about a way of living.
When we look at nature, nature doesn’t exist only in green shades, right?
From my point of view, you don’t need to choose between a design that is ecologically conscious and beauty. Thinking that you have to choose between those two is like thinking you have to choose between yourself or the natural environment, believing that you cannot experience pleasure and at the same time doing something good for the natural environment.

This ‘either… or…’ is a way of thinking that is present in our current society, I am focused on ‘both… and…’ .
If you look at nature, she can inspire us to re-create the same harmony with which she creates habitats. For example, the golden ratio is a naturally occurring sequence found in many things in the natural environment like shells, it was already used in the past from the great architects and painters, and it’s available for us to use again to create harmonious and beautiful things.

Connect with Daphne and read about her work on: www.daphnekusters.com (coming on May 1st 2023, meanwhile check her insta)