A Home for Man's Best Friend

A Home for Man's Best Friend


Dogs & Architecture
Domestic dog has been man's best friend for at least 15,000 years. The close relations, loyalty, and companionship of dogs with humans is a mutually symbiotic relationship. Today, many of our best friends, the dogs, live indoor under one roof closely with their owners, the human especially in the western culture. However, the so-called home is actually the architectural environments that designed with concept of human engineering to fit human body. There's no such a thing as architecture for dogs or cats. The life of a pet has always been destined and governed by their owner's choices. What if we were to go beyond human scale, to imagine an environment based on the scale of dogs or cats?

Architecture - Happiness to Dogs & People
sun-loving pup and its bed

 As a dog owner, I understand that most of the dogs play hard and sleep hard. The best place to nap and to comfort themselves could be anywhere in the house where they feel safe. Their emotional feeling towards the environment could be observed simply from their reaction, whether they're happy towards sunny day or depressed during the stormy rain. A good shelter for the dogs could be as simple as just a sunlight as their bed, and they will never request more.
Dog are mankind's eternal partners, and at the same time an animal whose many varieties have been produced by human intervention in the form of interbreeding different lineages. - Kenya Hara, Architecture for Dogs
I think architecture for dogs should be reconsidered, to be looked into a different perspective to change the way human interact with their pet dogs in order to improve the owner and canine well-being. A good shelter for the canine able to decide its emotional feeling where the happiness or sadness can then be delivered to our emotional feeling too. I remembered there's once my dog, Apple was there to comfort me after the terrible fighting with my sibling. Apple was there listened to me, which actually calmed me down and stopped me from making worse decision. As a dog lover, I definitely support the architecture for dog as I think human should be selfless and being lovely towards not only just the dogs, but all kind of life in the world! Rather than being anthropocentric,I have been indoctrinated into believing that my worldview is to embrace the ecological concern through architectural design.


Lastly, let's check it out some architects' idea on 'Architecture for Dogs' project run by Kenya Hara, the creative director of MUJI. The project is set to launched as an open-source network where dog-owners can download the templates for each of the thirteen designs by famous architects and artists, then build them for themselves.






Mobile Home for Shiba by Toyo Ito



Interactive Dog House for Beagle by MVRDV



reference:
Architecture for Dogs. Retrieved from: https://architecturefordogs.com/architectures

 Vanessa Quirk. (2012). Architecture for Dogs. ArchDaily. Retrieved from: https://www.archdaily.com/291083/architecture-for-dogs