AnimalFarm opening seminar

The AnimalFarm opening seminar marks the official kick-off of the ERC research project “AnimalFarm: An Architectural History of Intensive Animal Farming (1570–1992)” led by Sofia Nannini at the Politecnico di Torino.

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.

Program (2:30–6pm):

Introduction on AnimalFarm, by Sofia Nannini (Politecnico di Torino)

Beyond the Serving Suggestion: On the Regulatory Architecture of Dairy Farming, by Víctor Muñoz Sanz (TU Delft)

Keynote lecture. Stocking Density: Time, Space and Bodies in Capitalist Animal Agriculture, by Dinesh Wadiwel (University of Sydney)

“In Animals and Capital (Edinburgh UP) I argue that control over animal labour time is a key vector in considering the distinct form that animal agriculture took in accelerating line speeds and reducing the length of animal life. In this talk, I will consider how space has shaped the form of capitalist animal agriculture. I will firstly discuss the general interconnection between agriculture and the division between the metropole and colony, city and country that shape global histories of food systems. Secondly, I will examine the way in which space operates as a cost to production, and the implication this may have for the type of intensification that has occurred globally, in particular, the rise of industrial scale chicken production. Finally, I will consider the concept of 'stocking density' within animal agriculture and transport systems, as a unique marker of the life and death tensions that shape productivity and profit for capitalist food systems, and simultaneously create the conditions for an antagonistic confrontation between animal resistance and fixed capital.”

Seats are limited, and a closing aperitivo is included. RSVP (required) via the link above.

The AnimalFarm project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon Europe program (grant agreement: no. 101219242). Principal investigator: Sofia Nannini. Host institution: Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino.