Symbiotic architectures

It is hard to imagine an environment that humans inhabit that is not also host to other species. Of course, there is the contemporary discourse of hygiene in the home which is all about purification, a discourse which goes back to the nineteenth century (e.g. Shove 2003; Frykman and Löfgren 1987) and can no doubt be linked to the deep philosophical separation of nature and culture (Latour 1993). But even this discourse is somewhat riddled with arbitrary exceptions where some species (e.g. Dogs, cats) are permitted into the enclave of culture or ‘the human’ while others (e.g. Bacteria, mice) are not. But even more damaging to this imagined divide is the difference between public discourse and practice; I know (and have lived in!) many homes where people clearly put up with visible and co-habiting spiders, slugs, or other small fauna. Indeed, despite the practice of various hygiene regimes in the contemporary home, we all share an environment with a host of other species, albeit most of them invisible (Frantz 1988; Kembel et al. 2012).