Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Kyna Leski
Second Advisor
Michael Kubo
Abstract
The recent avian influenza crisis exposes the fundamental contradictions of capitalist spatial production. By compressing life into optimized enclosures, industrialized poultry farming has effectively transformed these spaces into "laboratories of viral evolution" breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases in the pursuit of maximum efficiency. This crisis is not an isolated event but rather a spatialized metabolic rift: the logic of capital disrupts natural cycles, accelerating ecological and systemic collapse. At the heart of this crisis lies a critical architectural question: If capitalism organizes and encloses life within space to maximize value, can architecture be reimagined not merely as an instrument of optimization, but as a site of metabolic resistance? Could we design counter-prototypes that offer alternative spatial futures? Humans have long engineered systems to manage non-human life, yet these very systems inevitably reshape human existence as well. The mass culling of poultry becomes more than an act of disease control; it emerges as an "animal warning" a biological signal that a political crisis is imminent. It is a sovereign gesture, etched onto living bodies, revealing how power operates through biosecurity measures. In this sense, the chicken becomes a powerful symbol, entangled in the networks of biosecurity, state control, and urban life.
Recommended Citation
Cheng, Zhongsu, "SPACE, LIFE AND CAPITAL: THE METABOLIC RIFT" (2025). Masters Theses. 1394.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1394
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