ANIMAL
1. Any member of the kingdom Animalia, comprising multicellular organisms that have a well-defined shape and usually limited growth, can move voluntarily, actively acquire food and digest it internally, and have sensory and nervous systems that allow them to respond rapidly to stimuli: some classification schemes also include protozoa and certain other single-celled eukaryotes that have motility and animal-like nutritional modes.
2. Any such living thing other than a human being.
3. A mammal, as opposed to a fish, bird, etc.
4. The physical, sensual, or carnal nature of human beings; animality: the animal in every person.
5. An inhuman person; brutish or beastlike person: She married an animal.
Since the Renaissance, the gap between Human beings and "living things other than", has widened substantially. Animal Environment investigates the artificiality of this constructed rift. It calls into question the basis of the taxonomic practices characteristic of the 18th Century, while exposing the strange bridging of that gap present today. The Animal rejects uniformity, singularity and the like, in exchange for mutants and Cyborgs. Distance from the Animal has caused what Catherine Ingraham calls, a "mimetic crisis between organism and milieu"1.The state of Arcthitecture (being a human and therefore an Animal endeavor) is reflective of this regression if we claim that modern architecture was based on this attempt at tautology, and eradication of life's vicissitudes. From Vitruvius to Le Corbusier and onwards, we remain trapped in a perennial attempt to quantify systems we see in the Animal in hopes of a transitive transference of its qualitative aspects--that is to say, somehow the Vitruvian Man and the Modulor as idealized Nature produces an ideal Architecture. Enter Cyborgs. "A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction2." Cyborg culture finds unity through asymmetry as seen in Chela Sandoval and Woman of Color through the lens of oppositional consciousness. Cyborg culture embraces couplings evident in Dali's Hyper-materialsm and the early works of Diller + Scofidio. The 'Animal' must be freed from the confines of the plains and Serengeti's of our planet, ceasing to be a filtered meter stick, a representation, of our advancement as Homo sapiens- the Anti-Animal.1