Animal Farm

AnimalFarm explores the architectural history of animal farming between Europe and North America, since the modern era and until the present day. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon Europe program (grant agreement: no. 101219242).

Call for applications: 1 PhD position (The architecture of zootechnics, ca. 1700–1800)

NOVEMBER 16, 2026

The Department of Architecture and Design at the Politecnico di Torino is recruiting the second (out of three) doctoral fellows within our research project.

Gruppo di lettura – Maurizio Torchio, "La peggior specie"

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO & ONLINE ON ZOOM, NOVEMBER 4, 2026

Come raccontare il lavoro, il paesaggio e le infrastrutture dell’allevamento intensivo tramite un testo di narrativa? Lo scrittore torinese Maurizio Torchio lo ha fatto col suo ultimo romanzo "La peggior specie" (Sellerio, 2026) – una storia d’indagine che intreccia allevatori, attivisti per i diritti degli animali, rifugi antispecisti, borghi e retoriche della gastronomia. Sullo sfondo, il paesaggio agro-industriale ed estetizzato delle Langhe. Durante l’incontro parleremo del libro e della sua costruzione insieme all’autore. Come in un gruppo di lettura, l’invito è quello di arrivare con il romanzo letto, oppure no: ma faremo spoiler.

AnimalFarm Seminar Series (Fall): "Animal Farm": Philosophical Perspectives

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO & ONLINE ON ZOOM, OCTOBER 28, 2026

In this seminar we will survey how recent scholarship on food and philosophy can shed light on how to approach the study of animal farms today. Particular attention will be given to questions of linguistic justice, scale and justice, transitional justice, ethics of technology, and imagination.

AnimalFarm Seminar Series (Fall): Milking rhythms: Sensing practices and multispecies relations in automated dairy farming

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO & ONLINE ON ZOOM, OCTOBER 22, 2026

Existing research on the socio-cultural foundations of industrial farming has often taken an anthropocentric perspective, emphasising industrial regulation and production while overlooking the sensory experiences and lived rhythms of cows and humans in daily practice. To address this gap, the author adopts a multisensory, post-structuralist approach. The analysis reveals that rhythms of milking and care are neither purely biological nor mechanistic. They emerge through co-constitutions of humans, cows, and technologies, and are perceived and negotiated through sound, movement, touch, smell, and sight. Industrial farm infrastructures, technologies, and materials actively shape these rhythms, coordinating practices and structuring daily management.

AnimalFarm Opening Seminar

SALA CACCIA, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO & ONLINE ON ZOOM, OCTOBER 21, 2026

The event marks the official kick-off of our research project!

AnimalFarm Seminar Series (Fall): Dalla stalla razionale alla fattoria senza terra. Le trasformazioni della zootecnia intensiva italiana nel secondo dopoguerra

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO & ONLINE ON ZOOM, OCTOBER 5, 2026

A partire dall’immediato secondo dopoguerra, anche nelle aree italiane a più spiccata vocazione zootecnica iniziarono ad affermarsi con crescente intensità nuovi metodi di allevamento di tipo industriale. La relazione intende ricostruire i principali passaggi economici, politici e sociali che accompagnarono la transizione dai sistemi zootecnici tradizionali alle moderne forme di allevamento intensivo, analizzandone le trasformazioni nelle strutture produttive, nelle modalità di gestione e nell’organizzazione del lavoro. L’obiettivo è mettere in luce come la trasformazione dell’allevamento non abbia riguardato soltanto le tecniche e i modelli produttivi, ma abbia investito più profondamente i rapporti tra lavoro, impresa, territorio e ambiente nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra.

Book club on Dinesh Wadiwel's work

CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO & ONLINE ON ZOOM, SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2026

An informal book club dedicated to Dinesh Wadiwel’s main texts, "The War Against Animals" (Brill-Rodopi, 2015) and "Animals and Capital" (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), bringing together researchers from different backgrounds to engage in conversation and exchange perspectives.

Call for applications: 1 Postdoc position (Critical Animal Studies)

JULY 31, 2026

This postdoctoral position will contribute to the research from the standpoint of the following fields: critical animal studies, animal history, the philosophy and history of science and technologies, the philosophy and history of ideas. What has been the role of animals in the making of livestock architecture? The research conducted by the selected postdoctoral fellow engages with the idea that the history of industrial farming is preeminently a history of animals who have co-shaped the way architecture was designed and built. Through the lens the aforementioned fields, the postdoctoral candidate will influence the research of the team with perspectives that strive to analyze the agency of animal bodies in the design of factory farming, as well as in the different tools used to restrict and contain them—such as cages, fences, etc. A special attention will be given to the history of zootechnics and the technological materiality of what can be defined as zootechnical architecture.

Panel at EAHN 2026 Conference: Animal, Industry, and Labor: Towards an Architectural History of Intensive Animal Farming

AARHUS UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE CENTER, JUNE 18, 2026

With this session we aim at increasing our knowledge and awareness on animal farming, in order to promote a deeper understanding of the Anthropocene and its alternative definitions – most notably, the Thanatocene, or the era of massive global death (Bonneuil/Fressoz 2016). If the future is closely dependent on our capacity of historical analysis, research into the history of industrial farming may suggest new modes of positive and responsible coexistence and allow the architecture discipline to participate in the search for more livable other worlds.

AnimalFarm Seminar Series (Spring): Spazi critici per gli animali

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO, JUNE 3, 2026

La lezione riflette sul ruolo storico dell'architettura nel plasmare le relazioni di potere tra umani e animali, mettendo in luce i limiti degli approcci multispecie contemporanei che includono gli animali nel progetto senza interrogare le radici dell'antropocentrismo. Rileggendo la storia urbana dalla prospettiva animale, emerge come la città non abbia semplicemente escluso gli animali, ma li abbia incorporati in spazi di sfruttamento che ne invisibilizzano o spettacolarizzano i corpi, rimuovendo la percezione della violenza esercitata. La lezione propone infine i rifugi come spazi di trasformazione concreta delle relazioni socio-spaziali con gli animali, presentando Agripunk come un caso quasi unico: un ex-allevamento intensivo riconvertito in rifugio e spazio sociale antispecista.

AnimalFarm Seminar Series (Spring): Senses of Confinement

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO, MAY 19, 2026

What counts as a “factory farm”? How does this category travel across contexts and places and does it share the same meaning of allevamento intensivo in Italy? Taking these elementary questions as its starting point, this talk explores the ways in which the category of the “factory farm” is navigated, evaluated, and categorized by public health veterinarians in Northern Italy enlisted to verify and manage the compliance of biosecurity, welfare, and food safety standards codified in European and Italian legislation.

AnimalFarm Seminar Series (Spring): Terra Infecta

SALA MOLLINO, CASTELLO DEL VALENTINO, MAY 11, 2026

Southern Italy is now a glamorous tourist destinations, but was long portrayed as a place of disease, uncleanliness, and barbarity. This narrative study shows how sanitation and its metaphors were constitutive of Italy’s internal colonialism, and how the notion of a pathological “south” opposed to a functional “north” persists there just as elsewhere. Terra Infecta is a counterhistory of the urban and rural landscapes of Italy. It charts the disappearance of the Venetian wetlands, histories of urban renewal and displacement in Naples and Matera, and protocols of containment in Milan during Covid-19. It is at once a critique of modern hygiene, and a collection of revelatory moments of community, healing, and resistance.