No Design Manifesto

Welcome to a world where everything seems “wrong”: eating meat, smoking, sitting, flying, data, campfires, flowers on the table—even your houseplant might be a climate offender. We’re flooded with dos and don’ts, as if daily life must constantly be corrected by a moral authority. But what if we didn’t shrink back in shame? What if we moved forward—with imagination?

The NO DESIGN MANIFESTO is a call for creative freedom. At Next Nature, we don’t believe in going back to nature—we believe in moving forward. A nature where humans and technology co-evolve, not under rigid rules, but through new forms of play. Design shouldn't be a moral compass—it should be a living, breathing system, alive with potential.
Instead of turning design into a lecture on good behavior, we see it as a space for radical curiosity. Not statements that align neatly with policy, but experiences that invite us to feel, think, and act differently. The future doesn’t need perfection—it needs connection: between nature and algorithm, bacteria and emotion, human and more-than-human.

Forget the checklist. Embrace the ecosystem. Don’t fear the wild edges. The new manual? We’re writing it—together.

Author

Mieke Gerritzen is a designer and curator, currently serving as Creative Director at Next Nature Network. Until 2017, she was director of MOTI (Museum of the Image) in Breda, where she developed the museum’s artistic program. She has written over ten books and produced more than twenty exhibitions exploring the impact of technology on art, design, and media. From 2002 to 2008, she led the design department at the Sandberg Institute and taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Her film Beautiful World was shown in over 30 countries, and her graphic work is held by MoMA SF and Cooper Hewitt.