This book challenges the assumption that architecture is a human-centered endeavor and calls for a fundamental shift in how we engage with the built environment. By examining how speciesist assumptions rooted in human exceptionalism shape architectural thought and practice, it asks how architecture might respond differently in a world defined by ecological entanglement rather than human dominance.
Drawing on ecofeminist interpretations of Spinoza’s philosophical work, the book develops a conceptual framework for redrawing human relations with other species. Philosophical inquiry and architectural representation operate together as modes of interrogation, with drawing understood as a form of thinking from the position of an architect engaged in multispecies relationality. The central claim is that by engaging with niche construction, architecture can become a vehicle for ecological empathy, shifting practice away from domination and toward enmeshment with the environment.
The book is intended for architects, designers, and scholars working across architecture, environmental humanities, and philosophy, as well as students and readers interested in climate ethics, multispecies theory, and the transformative potential of design.
This book challenges the assumption that architecture is a human-centered endeavor and calls for a fundamental shift in how we engage with the built environment. By examining how speciesist assumptions rooted in human exceptionalism shape architectural thought and practice, it asks how architecture might respond differently.
Arvustused
In her timely and poignant work, The Architecture of Human Exceptionalism, Eva Perez de Vega explores a different kind of world-building a world in which architecture offers a vehicle for ecological empathy to live more intelligently with, and not merely on, our earth.
Robert Kirkbride, Parsons School of Design + PreservationWorks.
Humans are niche constructing animals but so are an indefinite number of other species. Eva Perez de Vegas The Architecture of Human Exceptionalism is a timely and original intervention that joins a critique of human hybris with a compelling multi-species construction of the forms of what she calls ecotecture. This book should change everyones understanding about the meaning of architecture.
J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research.
Introduction | From architecture to ecotecture Part I | Rethinking the
Speciesist Framework
Chapter 1: Human Exceptionalism and Its Persistent
Dualisms
Chapter 2: Alternate Cartographies to Human Exceptionalism
Chapter
3: WithIn Environments IUNCTURA I - Expansion Joint 1: drawing Parasitism
Part II | Human Exceptionalism in Architecture
Chapter 4: Rise of the
Inorganic
Chapter 5: Architectural Rectitude
Chapter 6: Typological
Frameworks IUNCTURA II - Expansion Joint 2: drawing Commensalism Part III |
Ecological Cartographies
Chapter 7: Ecologies of Consciousness
Chapter 8:
Enmeshed Architectures
Chapter 9: Ecological Empathy in Architecture IUNCTURA
III - Expansion Joint 3: drawing Mutualism CODA | Drawing as a Mode of
Thinking
Eva Perez de Vega is an architect and educator, and co-founder of e+i studio, an architecture and design practice based in New York City. She teaches architecture and design at Parsons School of Design where she heads the Multispecies lab, and at Pratt she where she developed the Ecological Cartographies theme for degree project. She holds degrees in Architecture from the Technical University of Madrid (ETSAM) and a PhD in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research, with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as professional training from the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. Through her practice and academic work, Eva advocates rethinking human exceptionalism by engaging architecture as a multispecies practice, choreographing spaces and environments that promote aesthetic innovation and ecological empathy. She lectures widely on topics related to architecture and climate, animal ethics, and ecofeminism, and published her first book, Choreographing Space, in 2021.
