1 PhD position “The Architecture of Zootechnics, ca. 1700-1800”
The Department of Architecture and Design at the Politecnico di Torino is recruiting the second (out of three) doctoral fellow within the ERC Starting Grant Project “AnimalFarm: An Architectural History of Intensive Animal Farming (1570–1992)” (2026-2031), under the supervision of the PI, Sofia Nannini.
AnimalFarm investigates the architectural history of intensive animal farming from early modern Europe to the present day.
Read more about the project: https://animalfarm.info/
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101219242
On the PhD position “The Architecture of Zootechnics, ca. 1700-1800”: We are looking for a PhD candidate who will conduct research on the second chronological strand of the project (1700s-1800s), in the decades when industrial practices were progressively integrated into the methods of animal husbandry, until the emergence of the discipline of zootechnics in the mid-1800s (see Piazzesi, Del governo degli animali, 2023). By merging scientific expertise from different fields, such as veterinary medicine, chemistry, engineering, and biology, zootechnics became an established branch of knowledge that produced its own specific built infrastructures. The candidate will focus on the spatial and technological solutions for what we may define as zootechnical architecture, which was promoted and circulated through printed models via zootechnical handbooks, scientific societies, journals and institutional frameworks. The geographical focus is especially on continental Europe, e.g. France, the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, as countries where industrial approaches to animal husbandry were soon consolidated. The candidate will mostly focus on architecture for horses (stables) and cattle (dairy barns), as examples of closed environments where the tie-stall system was most mediated by architectural design and spatial technologies, and in which animal bodies began to be conceived as thermodynamic machines transforming feed into protein.
Read more here: https://animalfarm.info/events/call-for-applications-1-phd-position-the-architecture-of-zootechnics-ca-17001800