Animal Architecture

Definition

Animal architecture names "structures created for the habitation of non-human species" — a realm of design investigation identified by Blaine Brownell (2018) as "a particularly promising" one: "The spatial and dimensional principles of animal architecture may be embraced to create resource-efficient constructions with compelling visual qualities." The concept has two directions. Animals as clients: buildings designed for other species' occupation, particularly "beneficial species whose populations are under threat" — the University of Buffalo's Elevator B, "a tower pavilion designed to house a beehive, with space below for human visitors to occupy the structure and witness the insects' activities," and the University of Minnesota's Artificial Thicket, "a dense, multidimensional wall composed of reclaimed driftwood, designed to support bird and insect populations along the ecologically critical Mississippi River corridor." Animals as models: borrowing non-human builders' constructive principles — MATSYS' Chrysalis III, "a parametrically designed installation that investigates the efficient packing capabilities of sea barnacles with irregular sizes." A third, processual extension runs through the chapter's fabrication section: animals as actual builders (wasps' additive layering, the barnacle's shell "printing," 6,500 silkworms spinning the Silk Pavilion's skin, termites digesting acoustical panels, the calf eating the Truffle's formwork).

The concept is the wiki's most concrete instance of nonhuman design agency: not the nonhuman as actant traced by theory (Latour) but the nonhuman as client, model, and workforce within design practice itself.

Key Thinkers

• Blaine Brownell — the concept's namer and organizer within the hypernatural "properties" and "processes" approaches (2018).
• Andrew Kudless (MATSYS) — Chrysalis III; barnacle packing as parametric model.
• Ensamble Studio — the Truffle house: "the conversion of a residual building material by a metabolic process" (the calf as formwork remover).
• MIT Media Lab (Mediated Matter) — the Silk Pavilion: "the entirely animal-constructed textile skin" (also a centrepiece of Satterfield & Swackhamer's production-stream account).

Related Concepts

• hypernaturalization — the parent concept: animal architecture as the properties/processes register of the hypernatural turn.
• nonhumans — the theoretical frame: animals as clients, models, and delegated builders — agency distributed beyond the human designer.
• biophilia — the affiliation warrant: designing for other species as the reciprocal form of the human connection to the non-human environment.
• ecology — the design's stated stakes: "beneficial species whose populations are under threat"; the "ecologically critical Mississippi River corridor."
• authorship — who designs when the silkworm spins the skin? Cf. the repositioned authorship of satterfield-blair-swackhamer-marc.
• 3d-printing — the process link: wasp and barnacle construction as natural additive manufacturing models for WASProject's printed earthen structures.
• artificial-grotto — the inverse typology: the interior formed from landscape for humans; animal architecture as the structure formed for the non-human.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• "Living" rooms: The hypernaturalization of the interior (Brownell 2018) — the concept's source: the definition, the clients (Elevator B, Artificial Thicket), the models (Chrysalis III), and the builders (wasp/barnacle/silkworm/termite/calf exemplars in the processes section).

Open Questions

• Does designing for animals constitute an ethics of the nonhuman or an aestheticized husbandry — are the bees and birds clients or exhibits (Elevator B's "space below for human visitors… to witness the insects' activities")?
• Is animal architecture architecture? If architecture is defined by human inhabitation and meaning, "structures created for the habitation of non-human species" tests the discipline's boundary — does the concept belong to interior-architecture or to ecology?
• The animals-as-builders examples are all supervised nature: the designer "establish[es] the right conditions" and directs the experiment. Is delegated animal labour genuinely "a partnership with nature – rather than traditional brute consumption of natural resources" — or consumption by other means?