This symposium is the closing event of the research project Cowborgs in the Polder, led by Víctor Muñoz Sanz at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. This project has been exploring the interactions between animals, humans, robots, data technologies, and farm architecture in the industrialized Dutch dairy landscapes.
The invention of the milking robot in 1992 by Dutch company Lely marked the beginning of a digital revolution in dairy farming. Today, self-guided barn cleaners, automated kitchen and feeding systems, robotic fencers, sensor-packed cow collars, smartphone apps, artificial intelligence assistants, among other innovations, have replaced human labor and reportedly improved animal welfare. However, the widespread adoption of automation technologies has also led to larger, industrial farms. Today, this sector is questioned for its adverse effect on nature, especially in the context of the nitrogen crisis. To better address environmental problems caused by farming, it is important to understand how the use of automation and other digital technologies in this sector is affecting those places where food is produced. How has the design of farm buildings, animal bodies and technologies transformed Dutch dairy landscapes?
Program
9:45 Doors open. Coffee and tea.
10:00 Welcome by Taneha K. Bacchin
10:05 Introduction by Víctor Muñoz Sanz
10:15 Part 1
Restoration. Abbie Vandivere & Jolijn Schilder, Mauritshuis
Rural Modernity. Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, architect and curator
Handbooks. Sofia Nannini, Politecnico di Torino
Moderated by Taneha K. Bacchin
12:00 Lunch (included)
13:00 Part 2
True Type. Víctor Muñoz Sanz, TU Delft
Feedlot. Nikos Katsikis, TU Delft
Moderated by Gent Shehu
14:15 Coffee and tea break
14:30 Part 3
Technobiopolitics. Dániel Szalai, visual artist and researcher
Care-Production Knotting. Katy Overstreet, University of Copenhagen
Xenozoopolis. Catia Faria, Complutense University of Madrid
Moderated by Lenneke Slangen
16:00 Discussion
16:45 Drinks at Het Nieuwe Café
Speakers
Dr. Abbie Vandivere has worked as Paintings Conservator at the Mauritshuis in the Hague since 2015. She and Jolijn Schilder are currently restoring De Stier (The Bull, 1647) by Paulus Potter in front of the public at the museum. In 2018-20, Abbie was the Head Researcher responsible for the technical examination of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. She received a PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2013, a postgraduate diploma in paintings conservation from the Courtauld Institute in London in 2005, and BA from Princeton University in 2001.
Jolijn Schilder MSc is a Paintings Conservator, currently investigating and restoring De Stier (The Bull, 1647) by Paulus Potter in a public conservation studio at the Mauritshuis with AbbieVandivere. Jolijn received her post-master diploma (2021) and MSc degree (2019) in paintings conservation at the University of Amsterdam.
Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco is an architect and curator. He holds a PhD in Architectural History and Criticism, Princeton University. He has served as a curator for institutions such as Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (in charge of architecture’s permanent collection), La Casa Encendida, Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, or the Oslo Architecture Triennale. He was a Critical Studies Helena Rubinstein Fellow 2017-18 at the Whitney Independent Study Program, and an IKKM-Weimar Princeton Summer School for Media Studies Fellow 2016.
Sofia Nannini is an Assistant Professor in architectural history at the Politecnico di Torino. She is author of Icelandic Farmhouses: Identity, Landscape and Construction (1790-1945) (Firenze University Press, 2023) and of The Icelandic Concrete Saga: Architecture and Construction (1847–1958) (Jovis, 2024). She is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled The Mechanization of Life: An Architectural History of Intensive Animal Farming. This project has been supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Víctor Muñoz Sanz is an assistant professor of urban design at TU Delft, where he conceptualizes, leads and develops critical research on the architecture and urbanism of the past, present and future of work. His research looks at the interplay of the design of productive landscapes with technology and management, and aims to question the role of urban design in enabling new urban economies and inclusive forms of work. He is the author of the book Una Rápida Compañera (2024), and co-editor of Habitat: Ecology Thinking in Architecture (2020), Roadside Picnics: Encounters with the Uncanny (2022), and Automated Landscapes (2023). Víctor qualified as an architect at the School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM, 2006), and holds a master’s of architecture in urban design, with distinction, from Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2011), and a PhD cum laude in architecture from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (2016).
Nikos Katsikis is an assistant professor of urban design at TU Delft. His work lies at the intersection of urbanization theory, territorial design and geospatial analysis. Through his research he seeks to contribute to a geographical understanding of the socio-metabolic relations between cities and their operational landscapes: non-city landscapes of primary production, circulation and waste disposal that support urban life. He holds graduate degrees in architecture and spatial design from the National Technical University of Athens (2006, 2008) and a Doctor of Design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2016).
Dániel Szalai is a Hungarian visual artist and researcher. Investigating human-animal relationships in industrial settings, Szalai’s work reflects on the role of technology in instrumentalisation and exploitation, and explores what technobiopolitics means for humans and non-humans. Szalai studied photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and also holds a degree in art and design theory. He is currently a doctoral candidate in multimedia art at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. He lives and works in Budapest.
Katy Overstreet is an assistant professor of environmental humanities at the University of Copenhagen. Her work brings together multispecies ethnography and feminist STS to investigate care and production in agricultural landscapes in Scandinavia and the American Midwest. By focusing on embodied work and technological change, Katy’s work demonstrates how fragilities are made and mitigated within human-cow-microbe-landscape entanglements in more-than-capitalist modes of production. Katy holds an MA (2012) and PhD (2018) from the University of California Santa Cruz and a PhD (2019) from Aarhus University, where she was a PhD fellow on the Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene Project (AURA).
Catia Faria is an assistant professor of moral philosophy at Complutense University of Madrid and a founding member of the Centre for Animal Ethics at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). They work at the intersection of animal ethics, feminist ethics and AI ethics. Their latest work “Animal Ethics in the Wild” has been recently published by Cambridge University Press (2023).
Moderators
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin is an architect, urban designer, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of urban design, landscape architecture, and environmental sciences. She is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Research of Urban Design at Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. In her projects and teaching, she investigates the nexus between space, ecology, culture, and politics in the design and planning of critical and highly dynamic landscapes. Her current work focuses on situated (site/context/culture-sensitive) forms of urban design related to environmental fragility, increasing extreme weather events and climate, and resource depletion, with projects in the North Sea, the Arctic, Brazil, South Africa, and India.
Gent Shehu is a PhD Candidate in the Design, Data and Society Group and the Section of Urban Design at TU Delft. His research investigates the typological transformations and overall spatial and cultural implications of using digital technologies in horticulture. His focus is on the contemporary Glasshouse: that finely attuned nineteenth-century building type, inside which humans, plants, architecture, climate data, and artificial intelligence technologies interchange information to meet the cultural and societal demands of the twenty-first century. Gent holds a master’s degree in Architecture and Urban Design, with high honours, from Polis University, Albania (2018) and a post-master degree, cum laude, from The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design, TU Delft (2021).
Lenneke Slangen is a researcher, editor, and designer, studying the interdisciplinarity of philosophy, (digital) cultures and architecture. She graduated from The Berlage’s post-master program at the Technical University of Delft, where she also earned her Master’s degree. In addition to her roles as an editor and curator at Archined, Lenneke founded the research and design platform Versus\: Architectures Beyond. Her work explores alternative relationships between humans, non-humans, buildings, and technologies. By applying philosophical approaches to the spatial practices and their regulations, she seeks to go beyond the existing principles of architectures to neglect embedded dichotomies.
Cowborgs in the Polder: how the design of farm buildings, animal bodies and technologies transformed Dutch dairy landscapes is a project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through the grant SSH Open Competition XS Pilot 2022-2023 round 3 (project 406.XS.03-056). Principal Investigator: Víctor Muñoz Sanz; Research Assistant: Divya Agarwal. Critical Environment Group, Section of Urban Design, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.