We are living on a damaged (Tsing et al. 2017) and a broken planet (Fitz & Krasny 2019). It is not only an environmental crisis that we are living through but what critical theorist Nancy Fraser calls a general crisis of environmental, political and social degradation that forces us to question many of our current habits (Fraser 2014). The entanglements of architecture in these crises are strong. The construction sector accounts for half of the world's usage of raw materials. One third of global green house gas emissions are related to the built environment. The effects of environmental changes are felt most in the global south, although they are often caused by the activities of western countries. The need for turning this development towards a less harmful path is urgent. (IPCC 2023) However, the search for more sustainable solutions in architecture is often approached as a techno-scientific, mathematical exercise where relationalities, interconnectivities and the lived, human experience is neglected (Brennan 2011). Jane Rendell claims that: "The modes of working characteristic to a feminist approach to critical spatial practice are highly appropriate for tackling the three-stranded collapse of ecology, energy and economy that faces us now - -" (Rendell 2018). A more caring and embodied approach is needed.
I search for new paths through posthuman feminist thought. Feminist thinker Maria Puig de la Bellacasa claims that: "Interdependency is not a contract, nor a moral idea - it is a condition." (Bellacasa 2017, italics orig.) A condition we must accept to be able to continue living on this planet. Posthuman feminist thoughts on interconnectivity are not new ideas. Even in Western discourse they have been discussed for quite a long time (e.g. Uexküll 2010 [orig. 1940]). Outside of western, academic discourse, there are entire cultures and knowledge systems relying on forms of interconnectivity, such as the Sámi here in Finland (e.g. Magga 2022) or the Latin American indigenous communities resisting "ontological occupation" described by Arturo Escobar (Escobar 2017).
In order for a shift of the necessary magnitude towards a more sustainable building culture to be possible, a multitude of current Western habits must be unlearned and rethought. However the architectural industry in Western countries is firmly tied in to the complex financial, legal and political systems in place at the moment (Frichot et al. 2018), leading to apathy I have experienced myself during my decade long career in the industry. Open-ended experiments and exploration seem difficult, or impossible even, at a time when they should be paramount. Avenues for curiosity, space for failure, courage for vulnerability and new ways of knowing must be sought.
In her essay "Architecture and Care", feminist architecture and care theorist Elke Krasny critically examines three harmful divides in western architecture. She traces the separation of architecture from nature back to Vitruvius (1st century BC), whose architectural principles are often considered the timeless fundaments of western architecture. The division of architects and craftspeople is traced to Leon Battista Alberti in the 15th century, promoting the architect to a position of intellectual and creative autonomy. Lastly from the era of the enlightenment, Krasny brings up the founding of the first school of modern architectural education, the École Polytechnique in Paris for "free and equal citizens" which at the time meant only free, white men, restricting agency to a narrow group of people (Krasny 2019). This practice-led research exposition explores whether the first of these divides, the separation of architecture from nature could be challenged by addressing the other two: expanding the practice of an architect from automous creation to other areas of the building project and opening the creative process to other ways of knowing and living.
There are numerous scholars calling for different forms of knowledge and knowledge practices (e.g. Krasny 2019, Tsing et. al 2017, Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, Haraway 1991, Ingold 2013) in the quest for confronting the multifaceted crises at works. We must look past the technical, financial and political to see material becomings in architecture. Architect Juhani Pallasmaa calls for a more sensory and embodied approach to architecture and reminds us of the reciprocal nature of our relations with the world (Pallasmaa 2009, 2012) as does architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen from the point of view of cognition studies (Williams Goldhagen 2017). In this exposition I am working with bodily knowledge and more-than-human ways of knowing which ultimately get blended with the corporeal feminist concepts of, for example, the human body as a holobiont (Margulis 1991) – describing the human body as a community of microbial beings – and trans-corporeality (Alaimo 2010) meaning that those bodies are in constant interchange with their surroundings. Margulis and Alaimo remind us that the human body is not a closed object with sharp edges but in fact a constantly changing and interchanging porous system.
This exposition examines the evolving process of making the architecture and research project Kudos – Library of Material Relations, conducted mainly at the campus area of Aalto University, Finland in 2024, funded by Kone Foundation and Aalto University. The project explores how posthuman feminist concepts of reciprocal care (e.g. Bellacasa 2017) and distributed agency (e.g. Bennett 2010) could be embedded in architectural practice. The aforementioned theoretical concepts were turned into practical action, through principles provided by feminist spatial practice. Theory and practice slowly seeped into one another during the practice–led research process which was documented and reflected on both during and after the process.
Material texture by Ganoderma Lucidum, Elina Koivisto and recycled sawdust. Photo by Elina Koivisto.
"Architecture is a supremely material art", says professor of the History of Architecture and Technology Antoine Picon (2020). The creation of architecture requires moving immense amounts of matter from place to place. However, materiality in architecture is also a way for humans to "relate to matter and materials through the prism of their beliefs, knowledge and practices." (Picon, 2020) Thus, material considerations become central when evaluating any environmental, social or experiential implications of architecture. Architecture professor Katie Lloyd Thomas claims that the privilege of form over matter in contemporary architecture disguises the resources used, hindering us from solving environmental problems (Lloyd Thomas 2007).
The way we are used to seeing people as intellectual beings, and everything else as passive matter with which we can do as we please, has been questioned in recent decades. We are of the same origin as the matter surrounding us. Political theorist Jane Bennett suggests we move on from dividing the world "into dull matter (it, things) and vibrant life (us, beings)", calling for 'vibrant matter' instead (Bennett 2010). She draws connections between our conception of matter as a dead instrument and our tendencies toward consumption and destruction, which is the framework that our current construction culture is based on. If we understood matter as something with agency, would we still feel comfortable imposing a design upon it? Hylomorphic making (see e.g. Ingold 2013), already known in Ancient Greece, would have to make way for a more shared ways of designing and making – ways that may be found in the realm of more-than-human design, which emphasise "the sentience, intelligence, and agency of all organisms" (Rosén et al. 2024). An example of this, for example, might be designing together with fungal mycelium (Sydor et al. 2022).
At the same time as needing to move away from making out of materials to making with them, we should also consider designing with people rather than designing for them. There is a broad vocabulary on designing collectively. Terms, such as human-centered design, participatory design, co-design and co-creation embody slightly different approaches (e.g. Petrescu&Till, 2005, Malpass 2017). In this exposition, I have chosen to use the terms co-creation and co-speculation (Lohman 2018), as a way of including more-than-human participants and avoiding the terminology of business, the corporate world and politics as usually practiced. "Collectivity" is also one of the key principles of feminist spatial practice (Schalk et al. 2017). "In participatory projects, the process is somehow more important than the result, the assemblage more important than the object - -", claims Doina Petrescu. (Petrescu 2005) Bruno Latour's suggestion that we live in a collective of humans and nonhumans (Latour 2004) merges the roles of people and things even further and requires us to broaden Schalk's understanding of collectivity towards multispecies assemblages.
Just as anthropologist Tim Ingold proposes that "knowing is in making" (Ingold 2013), I suggest that unknowing should be too. Ingold sees making with active materials as growth, where sentient practitioners learn from the active materials they work with (Ingold, 2013). Picon has critizised Ingold’s thinking of making with as something romanticized and idealized by saying that "deprived of human intentionality, matter actually often resists those who want to use it" (Picon 2020). But both Alaimo (2008) and Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) describe the pain and hardship that interdependency and care might cause, so the premise for the approach is hardly naive or romantic. Co-creation, co-living and all interconnected relations – human, nonhuman, material or otherwise – always bring conflicting needs, burdens and responsibilities with them. Stepping down from the throne of the autonomous creator brings the architect to a terrain of all kinds of trouble that they must learn to stay with, to borrow the words of Donna Haraway (Haraway 2016).
This exposition is based on a practice-led research project conducted with methods that fall under the concept of "diffraction in action" (Sanches at al. 2022, Vega 2024). It broadens the concept of "reflective practice" (Schön 1983) which entails that knowing is in the action and should be reflected upon both during its course (in action) and afterwards (on action). For data collection, ethnographic and autoethnographic methods were used. Workshops were documented through participant journaling, audio and video recordings and interviews. Autoethnographic documentation was conducted by keeping a diary of text, drawing and audio recordings as well as by photography, methods which have been studied by for example Maarit Mäkelä and Nithikul Nimkulrat (2011). Journaling forced me and the participants of the summer course to reflect on our actions and emotions as well as implicit values during the design process and for me to evaluate their effects on the process and the results of the project (cf. Schön 1983). The physical artifacts created during the process also served as data. The reflective process of theory and practice stayed in motion, moulding the original aims and plans, and myself, along the way, enabling an open and exploratory outcome.