The book focuses on specific case studies from modern and postmodern architecture where animals stand out as agents that contribute to a broader political, cultural, and environmental critique. The various entangled, convoluted animal references and representations are not only seen as products of the architects’ sublimation but also as critical reflections of the architects’ active civic engagement and their role in the intellectual environment of their times. Such an interpretive charting of animals in architecture comes to define an alternative, contemporary field of research for architectural history, theory and criticism, which is also in dialogue with current scholarship in the fields of animal studies, posthumanism, and environmentalism. Le Corbusier’s ravens and donkeys, Hassan Fathy’s oxen and ibises, Dimitris Pikionis’ doves and goats, Yona Friedman’s dogs and unicorns, Superstudio’s horses and monkeys, Lina Bo Bardi’s snakes and spiders, John Hejduk’s lions and centipedes… Why do these animals appear and in which context? What is their latent philosophical and ideological content? In which ways do they express critical stances against modernity? How do they relate to founding myths and cultural identities? What kind of unconscious doubts, resistances and anxieties do they cover?The book will be of interest to scholars and students of architecture and urban planning, as well as to those interested in human-animal relations in the fields of art history, history of ideas and critical theory.
