The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology
Contemporary Approaches to a Cross-Disciplinary Field
1st Edition
Published on 28. November 2025
Book
Hardback
406 pages
978-1-032-80015-8 (ISBN)
Description
This handbook provides fresh insights into the debates and challenges that unfold in the cross-disciplinary field of architecture and anthropology. Based on studies of empirical contexts across the globe, the authors launch and test a broad variety of methods and advance various theoretical concepts.
Architecture and anthropology have always had overlapping interests, but a range of developments in both areas make it more relevant than ever to intersect, overlap, combine or even merge the two disciplines. In anthropology, the spatial, material, and nonhuman turns have paved the way for an increasing interest in, and need for, of changing the world, rather than just studying it. On the other hand, architecture, beyond designing structures, has become interested in the uses and processes that unfold in, during, and after construction. The contemporary research and practices in both disciplines are testimonies that a cross-disciplinary exchange is inspiring for engaging with, and responding to, the challenges of a world in ecological, societal, and political turmoil.
This handbook addresses established scholars, students, and practitioners alike by outlining contemporary developments and tensions at the intersection of architecture and anthropology.
Architecture and anthropology have always had overlapping interests, but a range of developments in both areas make it more relevant than ever to intersect, overlap, combine or even merge the two disciplines. In anthropology, the spatial, material, and nonhuman turns have paved the way for an increasing interest in, and need for, of changing the world, rather than just studying it. On the other hand, architecture, beyond designing structures, has become interested in the uses and processes that unfold in, during, and after construction. The contemporary research and practices in both disciplines are testimonies that a cross-disciplinary exchange is inspiring for engaging with, and responding to, the challenges of a world in ecological, societal, and political turmoil.
This handbook addresses established scholars, students, and practitioners alike by outlining contemporary developments and tensions at the intersection of architecture and anthropology.
Reviews / Votes
"This handbook offers a remarkable and comprehensive overview of the cutting-edge research produced at the dynamic intersection of anthropology and architecture. Each chapter is filled with compelling insights, unexpected theoretical approaches and creative methodologies, urging us to think about the profound ways in which the built environment shapes all our lives."Professor Inge Daniels, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oxford.
"As people make buildings, buildings make people. Both are enmeshed in the fluxes of a world alive with materials, bodies and dreams. In such a world, habitation and design are two sides of the same coin, as are the disciplines that practise and study them: anthropology and architecture. This landmark volume sets new standards for their collaboration."
Professor Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced
Illustrations
106 s/w Abbildungen, 75 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 31 s/w Zeichnungen
31 Line drawings, black and white; 75 Halftones, black and white; 106 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 174 mm
Weight
960 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-80015-8 (9781032800158)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Marie Stender | Claus Bech-Danielsen | Aina Landsverk Hagen
The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology
Contemporary Approaches to a Cross-Disciplinary Field
E-Book
11/2025
Routledge
€68.49
Available for download
Marie Stender | Claus Bech-Danielsen | Aina Landsverk Hagen
The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology
Contemporary Approaches to a Cross-Disciplinary Field
E-Book
11/2025
Routledge
€68.49
Available for download
Persons
Marie Stender is an anthropologist and senior researcher in the Department of the Built Environment at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research focuses on architectural anthropology, disadvantaged neighbourhoods, urban-domestic boundaries, place-making, and social sustainability. She has founded the Nordic Research Network of Architectural Anthropology and co-edited the Routledge anthology Architectural Anthropology - Exploring Lived Space (with Claus Bech-Danielsen and Aina Landsverk Hagen, 2021).
Claus Bech-Danielsen is an architect and a Professor in the Department of the Built Environment at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is a housing researcher working in the field between architectural space and social life. In his research he focuses on postwar mass housing and on the development of social and environmental sustainability in disadvantaged housing areas. He was chief editor at Nordic Journal of Architectural Research for a decade and co-edited the Routledge anthology Architectural Anthropology - Exploring Lived Space (with Marie Stender and Aina Landsverk Hagen, 2021).
Aina Landsverk Hagen is a Research Professor of Social Anthropology at the Oslo Metropolitan University, with a PhD on architects' collaborative creativity. She has published extensively on youth participation in urban development, innovation, organizational change, trans-disciplinary methods and action research. She co-edited the Routledge anthologies Media Management and Digital Transformation (with Arne L. Bygdas and Stewart Clegg, 2019) and Architectural Anthropology - Exploring Lived Space (with Marie Stender and Claus Bech-Danielsen, 2021).
Madlen Kobi is a social anthropologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research and teaching focus on architectural anthropology, waste, infrastructure, urban political ecology, circular construction, and material culture with a regional focus on China and Europe. She co-edited the anthology Coping with Urban Climates: Comparative Perspectives on Architecture and Thermal Governance (with Sascha Roesler and Lorenzo Stieger, 2022) and published her research in journals such as Visual Studies, Social Anthropology, Urban Studies, Roadsides, Eurasian Geography and Economics, and International Journal of Urban and Rural Research.
Ying Zhou is an architect and urban theorist teaching at the University of Hong Kong. Her research on the urban transformations of Shanghai, contextualizing contemporary developments in the institutional frameworks and historical legacies of the city, was published in the book Urban Loopholes: Creative Alliances of Spatial Productions in Shanghai's City Center (2017). Her current research looks at how the burgeoning of contemporary visual art spaces manifest the shifts in the arts ecologies of East Asian cities, and their intersections with heritage conservation, architectural reuse, gentrification, and the rhetorics of creative cities.
Claus Bech-Danielsen is an architect and a Professor in the Department of the Built Environment at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is a housing researcher working in the field between architectural space and social life. In his research he focuses on postwar mass housing and on the development of social and environmental sustainability in disadvantaged housing areas. He was chief editor at Nordic Journal of Architectural Research for a decade and co-edited the Routledge anthology Architectural Anthropology - Exploring Lived Space (with Marie Stender and Aina Landsverk Hagen, 2021).
Aina Landsverk Hagen is a Research Professor of Social Anthropology at the Oslo Metropolitan University, with a PhD on architects' collaborative creativity. She has published extensively on youth participation in urban development, innovation, organizational change, trans-disciplinary methods and action research. She co-edited the Routledge anthologies Media Management and Digital Transformation (with Arne L. Bygdas and Stewart Clegg, 2019) and Architectural Anthropology - Exploring Lived Space (with Marie Stender and Claus Bech-Danielsen, 2021).
Madlen Kobi is a social anthropologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research and teaching focus on architectural anthropology, waste, infrastructure, urban political ecology, circular construction, and material culture with a regional focus on China and Europe. She co-edited the anthology Coping with Urban Climates: Comparative Perspectives on Architecture and Thermal Governance (with Sascha Roesler and Lorenzo Stieger, 2022) and published her research in journals such as Visual Studies, Social Anthropology, Urban Studies, Roadsides, Eurasian Geography and Economics, and International Journal of Urban and Rural Research.
Ying Zhou is an architect and urban theorist teaching at the University of Hong Kong. Her research on the urban transformations of Shanghai, contextualizing contemporary developments in the institutional frameworks and historical legacies of the city, was published in the book Urban Loopholes: Creative Alliances of Spatial Productions in Shanghai's City Center (2017). Her current research looks at how the burgeoning of contemporary visual art spaces manifest the shifts in the arts ecologies of East Asian cities, and their intersections with heritage conservation, architectural reuse, gentrification, and the rhetorics of creative cities.
Content
From Critical Distance to Critical Proximity: How Can Anthropology Inspire Different Architectural Research?
Introduction: Critical Agendas and Contemporary Approaches to the Cross-Disciplinary Field of Architecture and Anthropology
PART 1: Methods
1 Paperwork of the Everyday: Reworking Welfare State Housing with Dirt, Dogs, and All
2 Releve as a Tool for Drawing Attention: Migrant Dwellings in the Rif (Morocco)
3 On Sketch and Script: Artistic Sensibility in Urban Investigation
4 Comparing Fieldnotes, Converging Methodologies: Architectural and Anthropological Perspectives on Socialist-Modernist Mass Housing in New Belgrade
5 Visual Narratives of Inhabitation for Interrogating Inclusion in Social Housing Renovation in Brussels
6 Drawing Matters: Graphic Anthropologies in Architectural Education
7 The "Organic" Production of Space and its Social Order
PART 2: Processes
8 Of Flesh and Concrete: Autoconstruction in the Fitness Architectures and Anti-Architectures of Medellin, Colombia
9 The Temporalities of Demolition: Anticipation and Refusal on a London Housing Estate
10 The Timeless Fruition of Perishable Buildings: Correspondences with the M?bengokre People
11 The Frustrated Need for Meaning: Situational Aesthetic Boredom and Collaborative Creativity in Everyday Architectural Competition Work
12 Tiny Homes, Unreal Estate, and the Precarious Politics of Housing: The Case of the Wendy House
13 Form Follows Kinship: Loneliness and Family by Design
PART 3: Uses
14 Making a City, Reinventing Ruins: The Social Life of an Urban Infrastructure
15 Sharing Space and Making Home: Everyday Belonging in Multicultural and Low-income Neighbourhoods in Norway
16 Ways of Inhabiting and Perceiving an Alvaro Siza House
17 Can Good Fences Make Good Neighbours? Anthropological Explorations of Openness and Boundary-Making in Architecture
18 From Function to Affordance: Observing Pedagogic Shifts through Use of Space in an Open-Plan School
19 Blue Tin Roof: How Architecture and Social Life Reflect, Inflect, and Deflect Each Other in Nepal
PART 4: Environments
20 On Polystyrene and Zebras: Integrating Ethnographic Perspectives and Architectural Innovation in Housing Retrofits
21 Circular Practices, Learning Processes, and Doing-It-Yourself on Japan's Empty House Renovation Projects
22 "Nothing Goes to Waste!": Processes of Demolition Material Reclamation in Istanbul and Beyond
23 Growing Spaces for at Least 100 Years: The Vegetal Politics of the Theatre of the Long Now
24 Dreams of "Stoffwechsel": Matter, Evolution, and Form in Architectural Anthropology
PART 5: Flows
25 Volcanic Ties: Mutually Constituted Landscapes in Mexico and the United States
26 Cementing Settler Colonialism: An Ethnography of Israeli West Bank Construction
27 The Cosmopolitan Pastoral: Mobilizing Peripheries from the Village to the City and Back
28 Chinese Enclaves in Spain: Urban Transformation of Industrial Districts and the Global Economy
29 Foreign Experts and Chinese Airports
Parallel Worlds: Missed Encounters between Architecture and Anthropology
Introduction: Critical Agendas and Contemporary Approaches to the Cross-Disciplinary Field of Architecture and Anthropology
PART 1: Methods
1 Paperwork of the Everyday: Reworking Welfare State Housing with Dirt, Dogs, and All
2 Releve as a Tool for Drawing Attention: Migrant Dwellings in the Rif (Morocco)
3 On Sketch and Script: Artistic Sensibility in Urban Investigation
4 Comparing Fieldnotes, Converging Methodologies: Architectural and Anthropological Perspectives on Socialist-Modernist Mass Housing in New Belgrade
5 Visual Narratives of Inhabitation for Interrogating Inclusion in Social Housing Renovation in Brussels
6 Drawing Matters: Graphic Anthropologies in Architectural Education
7 The "Organic" Production of Space and its Social Order
PART 2: Processes
8 Of Flesh and Concrete: Autoconstruction in the Fitness Architectures and Anti-Architectures of Medellin, Colombia
9 The Temporalities of Demolition: Anticipation and Refusal on a London Housing Estate
10 The Timeless Fruition of Perishable Buildings: Correspondences with the M?bengokre People
11 The Frustrated Need for Meaning: Situational Aesthetic Boredom and Collaborative Creativity in Everyday Architectural Competition Work
12 Tiny Homes, Unreal Estate, and the Precarious Politics of Housing: The Case of the Wendy House
13 Form Follows Kinship: Loneliness and Family by Design
PART 3: Uses
14 Making a City, Reinventing Ruins: The Social Life of an Urban Infrastructure
15 Sharing Space and Making Home: Everyday Belonging in Multicultural and Low-income Neighbourhoods in Norway
16 Ways of Inhabiting and Perceiving an Alvaro Siza House
17 Can Good Fences Make Good Neighbours? Anthropological Explorations of Openness and Boundary-Making in Architecture
18 From Function to Affordance: Observing Pedagogic Shifts through Use of Space in an Open-Plan School
19 Blue Tin Roof: How Architecture and Social Life Reflect, Inflect, and Deflect Each Other in Nepal
PART 4: Environments
20 On Polystyrene and Zebras: Integrating Ethnographic Perspectives and Architectural Innovation in Housing Retrofits
21 Circular Practices, Learning Processes, and Doing-It-Yourself on Japan's Empty House Renovation Projects
22 "Nothing Goes to Waste!": Processes of Demolition Material Reclamation in Istanbul and Beyond
23 Growing Spaces for at Least 100 Years: The Vegetal Politics of the Theatre of the Long Now
24 Dreams of "Stoffwechsel": Matter, Evolution, and Form in Architectural Anthropology
PART 5: Flows
25 Volcanic Ties: Mutually Constituted Landscapes in Mexico and the United States
26 Cementing Settler Colonialism: An Ethnography of Israeli West Bank Construction
27 The Cosmopolitan Pastoral: Mobilizing Peripheries from the Village to the City and Back
28 Chinese Enclaves in Spain: Urban Transformation of Industrial Districts and the Global Economy
29 Foreign Experts and Chinese Airports
Parallel Worlds: Missed Encounters between Architecture and Anthropology