ABSTRACT
A posthuman continuum between human, nature, and technology becomes increasingly evident in the smart materials, sentient systems, and ubiquitous communication networks that populate the urban environment today. The contingency of these organic and technological categories provokes new questions for architecture. For how many different species do you design? How responsive is the envelope of your building? How does your building engage the material and discursive forces of its site? In suggesting that architectural theory can integrate these questions, this anthology aims to expand our understanding of the messy contingencies, material ambiguation, and heterogeneous audiences that posthuman theorists suggest compromise our everyday space. Architectural Theories of the Environment: Posthuman Territory assembles critical texts and case studies that establish continuities rather than new dialectics to characterize the dynamic between architecture and the environment in the Anthropocene period. In doing so, this anthology beckons the discipline of architecture to recognize that its once familiar terrain is now bristling with new hybrids.
