Unmaking is a counterpart to making and creating new things that has emerged as a concept of interest in diverse parts of the HCI community. Unmaking has been posed as an ally to sustainability, encouraging designers to foreground issues relating to reuse, repair, obsolescence, degradation, and decay early in their design process. As a follow-up to the 2022 Unmaking@CHI workshop, this workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners interested in unmaking as it relates to sustainability and will focus primarily on exploring the role of unmaking in material practices, drawing upon the growing body of unmaking theory to explore future research opportunities for designing physical things with sustainable materials that are transient, degradable, and intentionally unmake-able. In addition to considering the pragmatics of what and how to unmake, we seek to articulate the relationships among unmaking and other related emerging themes and sustainable material practices -- including biodegradation, designing with more-than-human agencies, reuse, and repair -- and propose guidelines for designing for the unmaking of physical artifacts that are sustainable, equitable, and respectful of all entities involved.

As the demand and ease of fabrication for physical goods continues to grow, trash is rapidly accumulating on our planet. Unmaking -- a concept describing the destruction, degradation, and/or disassembly of things -- has emerged across different CHI communities and has been positioned as an ally to sustainability, encouraging more sustainable design practices and more reflection around the materiality of our designs. Unmaking is also well situated among other approaches for sustainable design, such as biodesign, designing with more-than-human agents, and designing for the disassembly and repair of electronics, which bring their own relevant techniques and theories to the table.

This 1-day workshop on May 11, 2024 (hybrid in-person in Honolulu, HI and online via Zoom) will bring together a community interested in sustainable unmaking and other material practices related to designing with materials and assemblies that are inherently degradable or temporary. Our goals are to:
(a) articulate the relationships between unmaking, biodegradation, disassembly, and other un-practices
(b) build a shared collection of materials, design strategies, and tools needed to operationalize unmaking, and
(c) reflect on the ethics and challenges of designing for the unmaking of physical things.

Participants were invited to submit short papers or pictorials describing reflections, case studies, design fictions, or novel methods/theories related to the above. Submissions were selected based on quality and the potential to stimulate discussions. Accepted pieces are published below and will be submitted to CEUR Workshop Proceedings with authors' permission.

Joanna Berzowska (Concordia University, Canada). Designed Obsolescence and the "Fleshbot"

Daragh Byrne (Carnegie Mellon University, USA). Zines for Unmaking: Designerly Frames to Dismantle eWaste's Sociotechnical Realities

Celia Chen* and Alex Leitch* (University of Maryland, USA). Ephemeral Myographic Motion: Repurposing the Myo Armband to Control Disposable Pneumatic Sculptures

Dominique Chen (Waseda University, Japan), Young ah Seong (Hosei University, Japan), and Kazuhiro Jo (Kyusyu University, Japan). Welcoming More-than-Human Unmaking: Exploring the Entanglement of Human and Non-Human Temporalities through Fermentation

Sofía Guridi (Aalto University, Finland). Unmaking as a Biotextile Design Strategy: The Case of "Borrowed Matter/Materia Prestada"

Ollie Hanton (University of Bath, England) and Cameron Steer (University of West England). A Case Study of "FabricatINK" through the Perspective of Sustainable Unmaking

Aditi Maheshwari and Andreea Danielescu (Accenture Labs, USA). Unmaking with Smart Materials: Creating Environmentally Conscious Products and Environments

Kongpyung (Justin) Moon (KAIST, Republic of Korea). Is 3D Printing Revolutionizing Sustainable "Unmaking" or Adding Problem to It?

Doenja Oogjes (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands). Unmaking with Unknown Trees

Joo Young Park (KTH, Sweden). Unmaking for Subversive Body Projects of Menstruating Bodies in Pain

Léa Paymal (École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France). Un-making of Physical Things: Sustained Embodied Engagement with Everyday Objects

Lydia Stamato and Foad Hamidi (University of Maryland, USA). Controlling Transformation: Youth Experience of Synthetic Biology Competition

Ticha Sethapakdi (MIT, USA), Muhammad Abdullah (Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany), Mackenzie Leake (Adobe Research, USA), Patrick Baudisch (Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany), and Stefanie Mueller (MIT, USA). Encouraging Disassembly as a Means of Sustainable Making

Kristin Williams (Emory University, USA). Upcycling as Interaction: A Research Agenda to Enable Inventive Repair

Zeyu Yan and Huaishu Peng (University of Maryland, USA). Practical Sustainable Prototyping: Using SolderlessPCB as an Example

Qian Ye, Bo Han, and Clement Zheng (NUS, Singapore). Remaking as Unmaking for HCI: From the Perspective of Paper and Touchscreens and their Platforms, Properties, and Practices