This Anthropology Course Looks at Building Design from the Standpoint of Different Species
Why Read This
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Summary
What This Article Is About
Richard Fadok describes his innovative course Space/Power/Species, which examines how architecture shapes human-animal relationships. Inspired by architect Joyce Hwang’s Bat Tower—a habitat designed for endangered little brown bats—the course challenges students to question how buildings typically exclude or harm nonhuman species through features like anti-bird spikes, traps, and enclosures.
Students conduct urban fieldwork documenting human-animal encounters, then create design ethnography projects imagining more hospitable architectures. The course combines cultural anthropology with design studio methods, exploring concepts like multispecies justice and challenging the anthropocentric worldview that treats cities as exclusively human spaces. Fadok argues this pedagogical approach empowers students to confront biodiversity loss and ecological crises with creative pragmatism rather than nihilistic despair.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Bat Tower Inspiration
Joyce Hwang’s installation with bat ladders and landing pads sparked reflection on how humans typically fail to accommodate nonhuman needs.
Architectures of Domestication
The course examines traps, tethers, and enclosures—from ancient Iranian dovecotes to modern industrial pig farms—as violent spatial control.
Urban Fieldwork Methodology
Students document dog parks, botanical gardens, and vacant lots, analyzing how material features center human bodies over animal needs.
Design Ethnography Projects
Students create ceramic models, VR simulations, and performance art imagining animal-hospitable architectures, curated in pop-up exhibitions.
Decentering Human Perspective
The critical lesson is learning to see humans not as central but as beings in the environment alongside other species.
Cities Harbor Biodiversity
Urban areas house many species—some forced there, others thriving—making animal-centered design crucial for reducing harm like glass collisions.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Reimagining Architecture Through Interspecies Justice
The article’s central thesis is that combining anthropological fieldwork with design studio pedagogy can challenge anthropocentrism and prepare students to address ecological crises. Fadok argues that conventional architecture systematically excludes or harms animals through human-centered spatial design, but teaching students to imagine buildings from animals’ perspectives cultivates the creative pragmatism needed to confront biodiversity loss. The course positions design thinking as an antidote to the nihilism accompanying environmental collapse when approached through social science alone.
Purpose
To Advocate and Inform
Fadok writes to showcase an innovative pedagogical model while advocating for integrating multispecies perspectives into architecture and anthropology curricula. The article aims to demonstrate how hybrid teaching methods can produce actionable environmental interventions rather than just critical analysis. By documenting student outcomes and theoretical frameworks, Fadok seeks to inspire other educators to adopt similar approaches that empower students as designers capable of creating more ecologically just built environments.
Structure
Q&A Format → Pedagogical Description → Outcome Assessment
Organized as an interview in The Conversation’s “Uncommon Courses” series, the article moves through standard questions about course origin, content, materials, relevance, and student preparation. This structure allows Fadok to progressively build from concrete inspiration (Bat Tower) through methodological details (fieldwork and design projects) to broader theoretical claims about ecological crisis pedagogy. The Q&A format makes complex interdisciplinary concepts accessible while maintaining academic credibility through references to animal studies scholarship and concrete student outcomes.
Tone
Enthusiastic, Reflective & Pedagogically Committed
Fadok’s tone balances professorial authority with genuine excitement about student creativity and learning outcomes. He writes with hopeful pragmatism about addressing environmental crises, avoiding both apocalyptic doom and naïve optimism. The conversational interview format allows personal touches—describing a student’s “brilliant answer” or sharing his “dream” for the course—while maintaining scholarly rigor through precise terminology and theoretical grounding. This combination makes radical rethinking of human-animal relations feel both urgent and achievable.
Key Terms
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Small shelters or houses designed to accommodate domesticated pigeons or doves, historically used for raising birds for food or messages.
“We cover dovecotes—houses for pigeons or doves—in ancient Iran and industrial pig farms in the United States.”
Animals regarded as pests, especially those that transmit disease or damage crops and property; often applied to rats, mice, and insects.
“We discuss how the material features of these sites reflect and reinforce how people relate to these animals, whether as companion species or as vermin.”
Friendly and welcoming to guests or strangers; providing favorable or conducive conditions for growth or habitation.
“Students translate their fieldwork into representations of imaginary architectures that would be more hospitable to animals.”
Relating to research or study undertaken after completing a doctoral degree, typically involving specialized academic work before obtaining a permanent position.
“When I first taught this course as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 2023…”
The total weight or mass of living organisms in a given area or volume; often used to measure ecological impact or biological productivity.
“Livestock, for instance, make up 62% of global mammal biomass.”
Serving as a desirable model or representing the best of its kind; worthy of imitation or serving to illustrate principles.
“As students refine their projects, we analyze exemplary cases of animal-centered architecture.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1The course Space/Power/Species combines teaching methods from both anthropology and architecture disciplines.
2What inspired Fadok to create the Space/Power/Species course?
3Which sentence best captures Fadok’s rationale for combining design with social science when addressing ecological crises?
4Evaluate these statements about student activities in the Space/Power/Species course:
Students conduct fieldwork documenting places where humans encounter animals in urban Philadelphia.
Guest critics from multiple disciplines evaluate student design projects during the course.
The final exhibition of student work runs for one full semester at the Penn Museum.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5What can be inferred from the student’s statement that designing for animals helped her “see ourselves as beings in the environment” rather than holding an “anthropocentric view”?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Fadok uses this term to describe spatial structures that control and confine animals—traps, tethers, and enclosures that facilitate human domination of nonhuman species. The course examines these across historical and geographic contexts, from ancient Iranian dovecotes housing pigeons to contemporary industrial pig farms in the United States. The concept emphasizes that architecture doesn’t merely shelter animals but actively shapes power relationships through spatial design that restricts animal agency and movement.
Design ethnography combines traditional anthropological fieldwork methods—observation, documentation, analysis—with creative design interventions. Rather than stopping at critique and description, students use their ethnographic findings to imagine and represent alternative architectural possibilities. This hybrid approach treats design not as applied decoration but as a mode of anthropological inquiry itself, where creating speculative architectures generates knowledge about current spatial inequalities and potential futures. The method emphasizes pragmatic imagination over purely analytical distance.
This statistic challenges the notion that cities are culturally rich but biotically poor by revealing the massive presence of animals that humans have forced into urban and agricultural landscapes. The overwhelming proportion of domesticated animals demonstrates how human architectural and agricultural practices have fundamentally restructured planetary animal populations. This fact underscores the course’s argument that human spatial decisions have profound consequences for which species exist, where they live, and in what numbers, making animal-centered design an urgent ecological and ethical imperative.
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This article is rated Advanced due to its interdisciplinary theoretical framework requiring familiarity with both anthropological and architectural concepts, specialized academic terminology like multispecies justice and design ethnography, and sophisticated understanding of pedagogical theory. Readers must navigate between concrete course descriptions and abstract claims about combating nihilism through creative pragmatism. The Q&A format aids accessibility but the underlying arguments assume graduate-level comfort with critical theory and environmental humanities discourse.
The Conversation is an independent nonprofit media outlet that publishes articles written by academic experts for general audiences. Their “Uncommon Courses” series showcases innovative pedagogical approaches that challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries, demonstrating how universities are responding to contemporary challenges through creative teaching. These profiles make cutting-edge academic thinking accessible while highlighting how education can address urgent social and environmental issues. The series serves both to inform public understanding and to circulate pedagogical innovations among educators.
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