SPATIAL TALES OF UNEARTHLY CRITTERS

(PUBLICATION)

Spatial Tales of Unearthly Critters tells the stories of nine creatures and their habitats. It offers an opportunity for spatial design to be practised and read within the realm of fiction and more-than-human world building, freed from the constraints of earthly bodily archetypes and normative modes of thinking. The zine assembles a multiplicity of bodies which have been imagined in response to societal urgencies. Collectively, these unearthly creatures meander between and across the intricate complexities of ‘monstrosity’ as an expanded framework to address these urgencies from the field of spatial practice.

When designing a space, we imagine how bodies might move through their environments. We imagine what kind of functions they will exercise, how they might derive pleasure or restriction, and how they might serve or be served by the space around them. More often than not, the bodies which spaces are designed for are those of able-bodied, gendered human beings of standardised proportions. As critical spatial practitioners, our curiosity motivates us to design beyond the dominant modes of understanding how space can be used. We dream up ideas and spatial configurations which dismantle stagnant blueprints for living, invite co-habitation across species, and raise questions about the origins of material and ongoing legacies of extraction. Once we free ourselves from established frameworks, reject the dominance of normative archetypes, behaviours and needs, and create space for the more-than-human, how might spatial relations materialise beyond what is accepted and familiar?

Spatial Tales of Unearthly Critters is the culmination of a design studio led by Cookies within the context of the Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design, MIARD, at Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, in Rotterdam.
Presented at Kunstistituut Melly
(January 2024)

Editors
Mila Broomberg, Nicole Jessé

Production
Anna Krikke, Artemis Mitsiou

Proofreader
Chloe Latour

Studio Tutors
Cookies (Alice Grégoire, Federico Martelli, Clément Périssé)

Authors and Designers
Silvia Bianchini, Mila Broomberg, Josephine Goverts, Nicole Jessé, Sungryul Jun, Anna Krikke, Artemis Mitsiou, Julia Woch, Anna Maria Zuech

Contributor
Gaia D'Arrigo

Publication Design
Joanie Brisebois

The habitats presented in the first section of this publication exist in the realm of fiction as a terrain where new worlds can be envisioned. In these pages, we imagine how these spaces might begin, above ground and below, to infiltrate the more familiar landscapes of cities, forests and beyond.