Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

ANIMAL CITY

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

Citations
Ingraham, Catherine. Architecture, Animal, Human: The Asymmetrical Condition. 2006, London: Routledge
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century” 1991, New York: Routledge. pp117