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

Descripción del proyecto

La arquitectura oculta de la ganadería

La arquitectura es más que casas y rascacielos. También incluye los graneros y cobertizos construidos para la agricultura industrial. Aunque rara vez se estudian como arte, estos diseños revelan cómo la sociedad ha organizado su relación con los animales a lo largo de los siglos. El equipo del proyecto AnimalFarm, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, rastrea esta evolución desde la Europa del Renacimiento hasta los modernos emplazamientos industriales norteamericanos. Mediante el estudio de antiguos manuales de construcción y registros veterinarios, en el proyecto se muestra cómo la agricultura se convirtió en un campo de pruebas de nuevas tecnologías y prácticas laborales. Además de albergar ganado, estas estructuras contribuyeron a sentar las bases éticas y medioambientales del mundo en que vivimos hoy.

Objetivo

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.