ABOUT THIS BOOK

A provocative call for architects to remember and embrace the nonhuman lives that share our spaces.

A spider spinning its web in a dark corner. Wasps building a nest under a roof. There’s hardly any part of the built environment that can’t be inhabited by nonhumans, and yet we are extremely selective about which animals we keep in or out. This book imagines new ways of thinking about architecture and the more-than-human and asks how we might design with animals and the other lives that share our spaces in mind. Animal Architecture is a provocative exploration of how to think about building in a world where humans and other animals are already entangled, whether we acknowledge it or not.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Paul Dobraszczyk is a writer and a teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. He is the author of Future Cities and co-editor of Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within.

REVIEWS

"Our planet teems with an astonishing variety of forms of intelligent life. Yet the ambition of architecture to put the human house in order has contrived to shut them out, forcing them to find room in the cracks where buildings fall apart. Could an architecture of astonishment, open to flights of imagination freed from the rigor of reason, offer greater hope for future conviviality? Paul Dobraszczyk thinks so, and has amassed a wealth of examples, from every corner of the animal kingdom, to prove it."

— Tim Ingold, author of 'Being Alive, The Perception of the Environment and Anthropology: Why It Matters'

"An urgent book for anyone who designs, builds, or even just inhabits human architecture. Termites to foxes, rats to bees, salmon to swallows—we have much to learn from their genius strategies to 'house' themselves. More importantly we're invited to reconsider ways we might accommodate them. Dobraszczyk is asking us to fundamentally re-imagine the way we make spaces, structures, and cities, not exclusively for humans, but as realms for inter-species cohabitation, actively welcoming them into our lives. Or inviting ourselves into theirs?"

— Fritz Haeg, artist

"Dobraszczyk considers the generally accidental interactions between animals and our current architecture to imagine how we might design more consciously with these fellow travelers in mind."

— 12 Books to Add to Your Reading List, Architect Magazine

“Whether we want to share our dwelling spaces with animals or whether – as in the case of rats, mice, spiders, mosquitos and the rest – we do not, we have to acknowledge that we are never alone in our homes. Dobraszczyk’s thoughtful book looks at this network of relationships and how we might learn from the way in which other species build and inhabit space.”

— Financial Times

"The environmental footprint of the construction industry is used as architecture writer Paul Dobraszczyk’s primary justification for writing this book on the relationship between animals and architecture . . . a fascinating subject in and of itself."

— Art Quaterly

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Introduction: Going to Ground

1. Miniature

2. Aerial

3. Wild

4. Aquatic

5. Domestic

Coda

References