Flourishing: From Simulating Nature to Human Nature Engagement

As global systems face increasing uncertainty, complexity, and continuous transformation, design-driven innovation must achieve holistic understanding and balanced engagement at the systemic level to address growing vulnerability, diversity, and emergent futures. This paper centres on the Chinese philosophical concept of Human Nature Engagement. It examines how this concept informs the curatorial intentions and core content of the theme exhibition at the World Design Cities Conference 2025 in Shanghai. Theinterprets the idea of flourishing through an academic and documentary approach, tracing a conceptual progression from the imitation of nature towards a system of co-living grounded in Human Nature Engagement. It is organised into three thematic sections: from linear consumption to circular symbiosis, from spatial occupation to ecological embedding, and from technological application to systemic restoration. These sections, respectively, present how resource circularity and closed-loop design can reshape production-consumption systems; how urban and natural environments can be integrated as interdependent components of a shared life community; and how technology and design can together support ecological repair and long-term resilience. The exhibition suggests that only by approaching technological innovation with a profound sense of care for both humanity and the natural world, and by fostering integration and co-evolution within the broader human-nature life network, can societies move beyond current ecological crises and cultivate new forms of regenerative civilization.