From Design to Co-nature’ing: Toward a Metabolic Epistemology of Design in the Age of Human–Nature–Intelligence Ecologies

Abstract Contemporary design operates within conditions of ecological destabilization and distributed technological agency that challenge anthropocentric and instrumental paradigms. While participatory, regenerative, and AI-mediated design approaches have expanded disciplinary scope, their integration remains conceptually fragmented. This paper introduces Co-nature’ing as a positioning framework that reconceptualizes design as a metabolic epistemology—a relational mode of knowing and acting across Human–Nature–Intelligence ecologies. Grounded in process philosophy, complexity theory, ecological cognition, and autopoietic systems theory, the framework advances a distributed but asymmetrical triad in which biological systems and algorithmic infrastructures participate as co-constitutive agents within design processes rather than resources or tools. The Co-nature’ing spiral - Co-Sensing, Co-Growing, Co-Evolving, and Co-Flourishing - is presented as an operative translation of this epistemological shift. A pedagogical instantiation through the BIP Design Roadmap illustrates how distributed agency can be enacted within studio practice. The paper contributes a unified theoretical foundation for biodesign as cognitive ecology and relational co-evolution.