Abstract
Architecture typically overlooks the presence of animals and the role design plays in domestication. Domestication makes settled human societies possible through the shared burden of labor with animals. The farms, laboratories, “pet-friendly” offices and homes in which animals work are places where humans work too. This article explores one interspecies workplace: a pet-food research facility employing hundreds of dogs owned by the Mars company in Tennessee. The dogs are housed in circular buildings that depart from the linear arrangements of most kennels. In trying to understand this design strategy and the collaborative relationship between humans and dogs in the petfood laboratory, theories of animal labor are drawn from Vinciane Despret, Jocelyne Porcher, Donna Haraway and Isabelle Stengers. This architecture fosters the transformation of the individual and the formation of a specific mode of collective action, the pack.
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