Cosmo-Techno-Poiesis: Architecture of Environmental Control

Architecture is a collective technological human practice to control local environments in order to protect the human body. Depending on the worldview and cosmology of the society which produces the architecture—increasingly the global worldview is rational, mono-technological and Western—this practice gives more or less space for nonhuman agency. This paper looks at ways to loosen the contemporary Western obsession with controlling the environment architecturally by exploring different forms of architectural memento mori (remember you must die). The act of willing (poiesis) protective-controlling architecture (technology) into the world, inside a certain worldview (cosmology), is explored through the conceptual entanglement of those three notions: cosmo-techno-poiesis. The paper concludes with an architectural example and a short summary.