The 17th International Architecture Exhibition – the entire series, including the art section, is known as La Biennale di Venezia – ran from 22 May to 21 November 2021, with the Salon Suisse curated by architect and publicist Evelyn Steiner. On 18 November 2021, the event “Jethro Knights, Armor Guyver, and Mutant X: How transhumanists challenge architecture” took place. Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel gave a talk on “Human and animal enhancement in the context of architecture”, followed by a discussion with Mike Schaffner (a Swiss cyborg) and Prof. Dr. Georg Vrachliotis (an architect at TU Delft). First, the information and machine ethicist clarified key terms such as “human enhancement”, “animal enhancement”, “biohacking”, “bodyhacking”, “cyborg”, and “transhumanism”. He also brought in his own terms “robot enhancement” and “reversed cyborg” or “inverted cyborg”. He then presented examples of human enhancement and animal enhancement, including in the context of architecture: cats with chips getting into the house, humans with chips bringing the smart home to adaptations, animals and humans with chips and transmitters detected in time in traffic, and enhanced and improved organisms that can live on alien planets. He concluded by offering ethical considerations. He was open to the idea of cyborgs and critical of the transhumanism movement. The booklet on Salon Suisse is available here.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
