Animatescrapers expands architecture’s subjectivity.

Architecture is historically conceptualized as fixed, stationary, and inert. Alongside discussions that restrict subjectivity to humans, architectural discourse often positions buildings and cities as inanimate objects that might be operated on by exclusively human actors. However, in today’s world, houses speak in first person via social media, caricatures of buildings stand in for complex forces of gentrification, and components of the built environment play the role of lead and supporting actors in films, theatre, and literature. This issue of SOILED tells stories that amplify architecture’s position as an animate actor—a companion to humans and nonhumans with its own representational, material, and ontological agency in the world.