Markus Wernli

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Verified

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This paper studies the benefits of a collective remote sensing method in the context of Growers Without Borders, an eco-social farm in Hong Kong. The farm was a collaborative effort of a design school and a hotel association to develop methods for recycling compost and food waste. Researchers recruited volunteers and asked them to sign in to a What...

The Soil Trust project is addressing the food waste issue by experimenting with eco-friendly farming practices and community involvement. Soil Trust also develops the Growers Without Borders service learning program. By combining eco-friendly farming practices with creative community involvement, Soil Trust promotes sustainable land management and...

Food retailers and hoteliers aiming at eco-social transitions struggle to show tangible impact on the ground. Since sustainable food systems necessitate internal reconfigurations of service structure, exploring value creation concerning the local environment and community is essential. Design management tools are challenged to deliver mutualist con...

This paper discusses spatial agency practice within a living lab in Hong Kong. Lab members work in Tai O Village, a historic fishing settlement receiving increased attention due to remnant vernacular housing there. The article presents historical and policy context for ongoing casework conducted with stakeholders in Tai O. It presents Tai O’s histo...

Design research increasingly turns to non-Western perspectives on repair to counteract the Waste Age and our climate crisis. We draw on the cosmotechnic vision by Yuk Hui (許煜) to explore agriculturists in Hong Kong who repair soil ecologies by recovering resources. They share many cosmotechnics commitments that subordinate human bodies, tools, and...

In densely urbanized Hong Kong, where land resources are premium real estate, and nearly 98% of food is imported, the traditional agricultural sector is marginalized, edging towards a 'sunset industry'. 1 This scarcity of arable land, compounded by food security challenges, has catalyzed various responses, including experimentations with soil-less...

Organic wastes are vital for farming, energy generation, and carbon capture—embodying naturally the ideal of circularity. However, due to their messiness and weight, organic matter arrives with biological and sociotechnical challenges. What kind of imaginaries, recovery practices, and contingencies are required to reclaim and revalue such lively ma...

Are you engaged in a commons-related project – past, present, or future – or do you want to integrate commoning into a project? This workshop is a supportive space for conference participants engaged with the commons to explore how they conceptualize and communicate the commons internally and externally. The workshop will focus on critiquing and ad...

In recent years, citizen designers have been working with urban communities on the ecological reuse of human waste. In this commoning effort, practitioners reclaim body-expelled resources for exploring the metabolically enabled household as a networked site of radical, co-productive transitions that harnesses nutrients and boosts local value chains...

This article is an invite to re-envision the future together. An invitation that extends beyond that small segment of privileged few who have com- monly dominated decision-making and paradigm. Truly collective imaginaries would listen to and account for successive generations, encompassing their desires, purpose, and aspirations. Here making, knowi...

In recent years, citizen designers have been working with urban communities on the ecological reuse of human waste. In this commoning effort, practitioners reclaim body-expelled resources for exploring the metabolically enabled household as a networked site of radical, co-productive transitions that harnesses nutrients and boosts local value chains...

This paper explores the transformative relations of unknowable possibility in three urban communities which upcycle human waste. Working with communities – human and nonhuman – is approached by applying the dynamic model of collective wondering conceived as (i) provisional proposition, (ii) responsiveness to difference, and (iii) affirmation in/of...

This paper compares three interventionist eco-sanitation cases by applying a structurally extended SWOT matrix for evaluating their transformative relations and capabilities in their respec-tive urban settings of the global north. The enablers and barriers underlying these human waste cycling communities are assessed by combining qualitative-quanti...

This report is about an explorative co-crafting course applying the notion of recursive publics to adult learning and pro-environmental activation, which aimed to engage a diverse cohort of learners towards patterns of eating, living, and engaging that promoted wellbeing and a healthy environment. This two-month-long, university-endorsed study in H...

This position paper seeks to address the operational logic that created the conditions for the pandemic to take hold. Grasping the crisis as an opportunity for an anthropological inquiry across disciplines, this exploration firmly anchors design inside the social commitment required by breathing bodies and life-enabling atmospheres. By infusing the...

Culture, Community and Climate: conversations and emergent praxis is a collection of essays and conversations representing a diverse array of voices, cultures, backgrounds and disciplines. But everyone who contributed to this book has something in common: they all care for the future of our planet. All explore different ways in which their mode of...

This research investigates how attending to the basic needs of human bodily existence is mobilizing transpersonal abilities that promote integrative flourishing. Rearranging human-environment arrangements begins with adept ways of self-regulation in daily life that require bodily engagement, courage, and failure tolerance. Such adventurousness is t...

In a somewhat speculative, participatory study we tried to design a consequential entanglement between people and plants. “We” refers to a PhD student (the fermentation enthusiast) and a product designer (the horticulture enthusiast) and 22 plant-loving participants. Over two months in spring 2017 we practically explored our personal role in bio-ma...

Since 2015, the Research Institute of Organic Treasures (R.I.O.T.) has combined fermentation practices and social experimentation in Hong Kong to give biological byproducts from human and urban metabolisms a regenerative purpose. Here putrescible wastes emitted from our kitchens, toilets, and bodies are considered our most foundational design mater...

In spring 2017 the homemaking intervention Anthroponix collaborated with microbiologists, agro-ecological tinkerers and 22 indoor planting enthusiasts to enter a three-month long experimentation of co-biohacking and co-learning. The basic goal was to enable our participants so that they could biophysically reconnect with the food loop, in a way tha...

During storage of urine, urea is biologically decomposed to ammonia, which can be lost through volatilization and in turn causes significant unpleasant smell. In response, lactic acid fermentation of urine is a cost-effective technique to decrease nitrogen volatilization and reduce odour emissions. Fresh urine (pH = 5.2–5.3 and NH4+-N = 1.2–1.3 g L...

What are ethical and species-affirming approaches for how humans, can relate to you, the fermenting Lactobacilli? In pursuit of this question, you, the single-cellular life forms inside living machines and bio-artistic events are invited to join the animal party! Just because human animals neither have the sensorium nor the empathy to grasp your li...

Mirei Shigemori (1896–1975), a historian trained in painting and ikebana, is increasingly admired for his contemporary Japanese garden designs. Believing the garden had fallen into cliché, Shigemori applied modernist shapes, colors and materials to create stunning avant-garde works that also celebrated the ancient Japanese gods and rituals. This bo...