Non-human animals and Architecture

Architecture does more than establish spatial arrangements that exclude or enclose non-human animals, proscribing their movement and contact with their own kind and other species. It is a cultural and representational practice imbued with history and meaning. Architecture cues and curates the encounter between humans and animals. The research we are each doing has in common the conviction that architecture is a component technology in the shaping of animal identities and multispecies communities. Our shared ambition is to reveal key theoretical and material moments in the longstanding engagement humans have had with other animals through architecture.

Presenters:

Gail Pini will discuss the influence of animal psychology and the idea of the ‘psychotrope’ on the architectural design of Africa House (1965) at Zurich Zoo.
Natalie Lis will reveal how architecture turned the male chicken from gladiator to ghost, and the female hen from mother to machine. 
Professor Sandra Kaji-O'Grady will describe the ways in which novel communities of work and leisure in late capitalism are being formed around the longstanding relationship between two social species, canines and humans.