Animal Farm: An Architectural History of Intensive Animal Farming (1570–1992)

Projektbeschreibung

Architektur, die sich hinter der Tierhaltung verbirgt

Architektur umfasst mehr als Häuser und Wolkenkratzer. Auch die für die industrielle Landwirtschaft errichteten Scheunen und Schuppen gehören dazu. Obwohl sie selten als Kunst betrachtet werden, zeigen diese Strukturen, wie die Gesellschaft im Laufe der Jahrhunderte ihre Beziehung zu Tieren gestaltete. Das ERC-finanzierte Projekt AnimalFarm verfolgt diese Entwicklung vom Europa der Renaissance bis zu modernen nordamerikanischen Industriestandorten. Durch die Auswertung alter Bauanleitungen und Veterinärakten zeigt das Projekt, wie die Landwirtschaft zu einem Testfeld für neue Technologien und Arbeitspraktiken wurde. Diese Bauwerke dienten nicht nur der Unterbringung von Nutztieren, sondern trugen auch maßgeblich dazu bei, die ethischen und ökologischen Grundlagen für die Welt, in der wir heute leben, zu schaffen.

Ziel

The architecture of intensive animal farming is a pervasive phenomenon of the global built environment, yet little is known about the buildings in which farming occurs. If architectural history is often a history for and by humans, what happens when we apply the tools of this discipline to investigate the zootechnical buildings designed to host livestock? AnimalFarm explores the architectural history of animal farming between Europe and North America, since the modern era and until the present day. Recent architectural historiography has developed an interest in the relationship between humans and other forms of life. Yet, the buildings of animal farming are usually perceived as atemporal, anonymous, and ethically uncomfortable. From sixteenth-century Palladian villas to today’s concentrated feeding operations, Western architecture has evolved along the entanglements between humans and domesticated animals – mostly cattle, pigs, poultry, and horses. Over the centuries, the practice of animal farming has been a pivotal field for spatial, material, and technological experimentations. AnimalFarm employs the methods of architectural history to investigate the print sources, such as treatises, handbooks, and journals, that allowed animal farming to become a transnational and scalable model. The research is conducted on three geographical and chronological strands, that embrace the beginning of agrarian capitalism (1500s-1600s), the dawn of zootechnics (1700s-1800s), and the great industrial acceleration (1800s-1900s). AnimalFarm pioneers a novel research methodology that contaminates the perspective of architectural history with three interdisciplinary layers: critical animal studies, history of veterinary medicine, and history of labor. AnimalFarm ultimately explores the historical roots of a controversial phenomenon of the Anthropocene, and it fosters an alternative gaze on the spatial, material, and ethical implications of the human-animal relationship through time.