RICHARD FADOK

American cities today house more wildlife than in any other period over the past two hundred years. As forces of habitat loss drive nonhuman animals toward human settlements, we face a moral dilemma: How should we live in these multispecies communities? To face this quandary, this interdisciplinary course in anthropology and design investigated the nature of space through the lens of human-animal relations. Combining seminar and studio formats, we read scholarship on architecture and animals, conducted ethnographic fieldwork at local sites in Philadelphia, and designed animal-inclusive interventions that we showcased at an end-of-term public exhibition, The Multispecies Metropolis. By asking how the built environment mediates the lives we share with animals from a global, comparative perspective, we sought to reimagine and construct new architectural forms better suited to our shared existence on a more-than-human planet.