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Knowing the Synanthrope

Humanity defines animals by their relationships to humans. Through this lens non-human species are categorized into two forms; domestic – dependent on humans for survival and augmented to live as companion species to humans, and wild – independent, capable of sustaining life without anthropogenic support. These relationships are based broadly on the level of human intervention required for an animal to survive.
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Introducing Guest Contributors – Sarah and Brandon

This month we are thrilled to include the voices of two new guest contributors to the Expanded Environment team - Sarah Gunawan and Brandon Youndt. Sarah and Brandon will be featured regularly in the coming months and we thoroughly encourage you to check out their work and thoughts.
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BioCity on NPR

Recently Ned Dodington spoke with NPR station KUHF, Houston Matter's Paige Phelps about the BioCity installation on display at Lawndale from January 22, 2016 to June 11, 2016. Check out the interview below!
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Object Relations; Part 3

Our lives are inundated by a growing presence of things. How we manage and relate to these objects, these piles and piles of things, and better understand their complex realities is of serious importance...
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Object Relations; Part 2

As we continue our discussion of the trans-worlding properties of objects we stroll through a woodland prairie with J. Von Uexkull and others...
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Object Relations; Part 1

Our lives are inundated by a growing presence of things. How we manage and relate to these objects, these piles and piles of things, and better understand their complex realities is of serious importance...
Weather Species
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Announcing the MONSTER Award Winners!

For Immediate Release: Announcing the 2015 Expanded Environment Award Winning projects. First Place is awarded to Lullaby of Weather Species, by Suo Ya. Second Place to In Praise of Dust by Young-Tack Oh and Thrid Place to Walk into the Sea By Zhi Wang. COngratulations to all contestants!
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KULTURFOLGER

Kulturfolger are defined as animals that thrive in a cultured landscape and actively engage with our human habitat. These organisms move through the city with tiny wings, blown by the wind- or crawl carefully along mossy damp walls of clustered apartment buildings.
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2015 Expanded Environment Awards: MONSTER

SUBMIT YOUR PROJECT The Expanded Environment wants your multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, impure, unholy design proposals. Show us your ideas about how extreme combinations of architectural form, material, and programs can reshape not only our built worlds but the way we think of them.
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Gulf Coast Green

We are happy to announce that Ned Dodington will be speaking at this year's Gulf Coast Green Symposium Healthy Communities - Vitality in Placemaking. Ned will be delivering a talk titled: Other Than Human; Notes on Anthro-Eccentric Design. The talk will focus on recent thinking about the importance of considering non-human agents in the design process. He will show-case leading-edge work in the field as well as "on-the-boards" projects for a forth-coming exhibition.
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On Resiliency; Part 2

Previously, I had outlined thoughts about current happenings and the implications of resilience to enframe not only human but non-human subjectivity into a state-sanctioned political apparatus. I’m interested to add two other voices to this discussion - Timothy Morton and Tim Ingold.
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Beastly Designs

Zoos are strange, wondrous and beguiling institutions. They are instructive and detrimental, compassionate and cruel, culturally specific but universally appealing and architecturally unlike any other construction.
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On Resiliency; Part 1

Recent articles published by Ross Exo Adams, Bruce Braun, and Marc Neocleous, in response to two major works on resilient design, the Rising Current's show at MoMA in 2010 and the more recent Rebuild By Design show illustrate that "resilience", is not necessarily the all-positive, progressive and knowledgeable term that I had once embraced.
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Follow-up: Interview with Rona Binay

Recently our founder and editor Ned Dodington was able to catch-up with Rona Binay, a young designer working in New York and the author of the previously posted project "Coexist." She was generous enough to share some of her thoughts with him. Here's what they discussed.
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Anthro-Eccentric Practice

An anthro-eccentric practice, on the other hand, if that were possible (the jury’s out on this) would reshape the role of the human before it reshaped the environment. It would consider impacts of changes in the environment from a variety of perspectives. It would reinforce living in the world, rather on the world.
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Update: Nature’s Toolbox

On September 4th, 2014 Ned Dodington delivered the inaugural lecture at the University of Northern Iowa's School of art to a filled auditorium of students, faculty and guests. A recording of the lecture, in full, can be viewed at the link below.
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Coexist: MFA Thesis from Rona Binay

SVA (School of Visual Arts) Product Design student Rona Binay’s MFA thesis entitled, ‘COEXIST, Mixing with Urban Wildlife’ transgresses the relationship between the "urban" and the "natural" through a series of four design interventions.
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Nature’s Toolbox

Nature’s Toolbox is a broadly themed show organized around the power of art and artists to instigate positive global environmental corrections, stimulating biodiversity, increasing public awareness and hopefully reducing the more harmful actions of humans on our home.
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The Cross-Species Design Imperative

The cross-species design imperative, first and foremost is a logical next step in the larger environmental movement. After decades of conserving energy and preserving environments, The Expanded Environment invites designers to become pro-active, shifting language from mere “conservation” and “responsibility” to "engaging" and "activating" those environments and the biological agents within them.
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OpEd: More scenes like this

Twice a week I slide open the glass door to our outdoor patio and refill a hardware store bird feeder with bird seed. The package for the bird seed says “Attracts up to 2x more Finches” but we never see anything other than mourning doves and the occasional mocking bird. It makes no matter to me, my wife or the cat, especially the cat.
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Rebranding!

After more than 5 years of functioning as Animal Architecture we will be rebranding and reorganizing as a non-profit organization now to be named: The Expanded Environment. This change comes at a critical moment in the organization, within our collective thinking about the impact of Animal Architecture now and in the near future, and within the current climate crises around the globe.
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Urban Apiaries

Increasing interest and activity in urban agriculture is exciting for human urban development and the greening, literally and metaphorically, of our cities. But more often than not animals in almost every capacity are left out of the conversation.
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Animal Planet

A recent series on the New York Times, "explores the strange and diverse ways the human and animal worlds intersect." This first installment looks mainly at the various moral and philosophical conundrums that arrive via live-streaming nature cameras.