Animals and Architecture

by David Hancocks

A study of buildings for animals

200 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Marjorie Hakala]

I wish I could love this book, because I am very interested indeed in the topic of animals and architecture, but someone needs to alert the author that when you give a book a title like this, it means you need to discuss the two topics in connection with one another, and not just wander back and forth from the animal topic to the architecture topic. Here is a sample of the text:

Today the cat has returned to a position of popularity. The sacred element is not as obvious as in Egyptian times, but there does exist quite a flourishing trade in the management of cemeteries for cats, dogs and other favourite pets. On occasions dead cats have also been discovered buried within the construction of old buildings in Europe. Stuffed, and often prepared with a rat in their mouths, they were sealed under the floorboards or in the lofts to act as ornamental scarecrows. An analogous situation occurred recently when a cat discovered small microphones hidden under the floorboards of the Netherlands Embassy in Moscow. The cat had been excited by electronic waves activating the microphones and thus revealed their presence.

Whether the information picked up by these microphones had been of any use is not known, but 4000 years ago the Egyptians considered that all knowledge was divine, and consequently all animals, from bulls to dung beetles, were considered worthy of worship to a greater or lesser degree.

The whole book is like this, wandering inscrutably from past to present to recent past to ancient history again, only discussing architecture perhaps eight percent of the time, and frequently going off the rails entirely to talk about hidden microphones in Moscow. Is there another book out there, anywhere, about animals and architecture? If so, I'll take that one please.