Paper short abstract:

Making Oddkin is an architectural experiment that tells about other kinds of kinship and companionship beyond our well known anthropocentric relationships to the other species on earth. A home in 2025 becomes a place for unusual encounters in which we live almost in mutualism with other creatures.

Paper long abstract:

The project draws inspiration from Donna Haraway's book „Staying with the Trouble“. Haraway coined the term Making Oddkin to describe the need for unexpected collaborations and combinations between humans and non-humans.

But why would we live together in a house with animals and not in nature?

Our species has been conquering the spaces of other animals without much hesitation for quite a while now. Whether through cultivating land or pouring concrete - (the majority of) Homo sapiens is spreading profusely, while leaving the habitats of other animals behind in devastating conditions.

Making Oddkin opens up the private home as the manifestation of the famous culture-nature divide and questions our right to solitude in favour of solidarity.

The safe spaces we create to protect us from the wilderness become places to reconnect with the wilderness and other creatures.

To preserve some of what we call nature and adapt our way of life to environments in flux, unfamiliar models of cohabitation and partnership might even become necessary - models that go well beyond the idea of exploitation.

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In the Home of 2025 we work with invasive raccoons on their eating habits to protect endangered species in our wilderness while connecting with pigs through play to learn about our not-so-exceptional human traits. In the domestic setting the borders between culture and nature start to blur - to become a space for rewiring the entanglements with the other critters on our planet in surprising ways.