Adaptive reuse in industrial farm buildings: nesting critical (infra)structures of trans-species care

The structures humans build rarely show any semblance of kindness towards nonhuman animals, ranging instead from the demeaning, to the inhospitable, to the coercive and downright abusive. By far the most ubiquitous are the industrialised buildings constructed to contain those farmed for food. Overt yet simultaneously insidious, these (infra)structures of harm extend across vast swathes of land, dominating human-nonhuman relations. This paper explores the adaptive reuse of farm buildings as a transformational response to unendurable spaces through an interdisciplinary reading of design as activism. Expanding mainstream concerns around the climate and energy crises, we address wildlife loss and ecological breakdown in co-existence with the fundamental social justice concerns that underpin them. Taking egg-laying hens as a much pained example, we engage with the question, ‘how might the de(con)struction of industrial farm structures be harnessed as a tool of activism, supporting liberation and sanctuary-making with ex-farmed animals?' Recognising hens as designers and construction workers in their own rights, agency is extended towards nonhuman designers as a means towards spatial justice, reparation and (re)empowerment. Feminist participatory design methodologies are adapted for human-nonhuman collaborations, triggering an expansion of our communication and care practices to prioritise relational processes over formal outcome. Speculative fiction, narrative and model-making methodologies imagine the stripping back of impenetrable facades to open up alternative futures, expanding the boundaries of our perceived horizons in co-construction of the ‘otherwise’.