Publication

  • Architecture Follows Fish: An Amphibious History of the North Atlantic
    André Tavares
    Author
    MIT Press, 2024
  • GRANTEE
    André Tavares
    GRANT YEAR
    2022

“The United States Court at the Fisheries Exhibition,” 1883. Illustration in F. Whymper, “The Fisheries of the World. The International Fisheries Exhibition”

To what extent can a fish produce architecture? The objects of this book are the leftovers of historical commercial fisheries, their coastal settlements, and industrial facilities. Its gaze is focused on architecture’s ecological impact and how construction its intertwined with natural resources and the environment. Certain buildings exist because of the presence of nearby fishing grounds, and their existence puts pressure on fish populations. What are the relationships between marine ecology and architecture? Architecture Follows Fish sets out a hypothesis to tackle these dynamic relationships. It takes cod as an example covering the whole North Atlantic region, with the same fish connecting different practices from both sides of the ocean. The research looks through several lenses: marine ecosystems; fishing technology; food processing; politics; consumption habits. The outcome aims to trace a socio-ecological history of architecture, overcoming the nostalgia for industrial heritage and raising awareness of the environmental effects of architecture.

André Tavares is an architect and the founding director of Dafne Editora, an independent publishing house based in Porto. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Jornal Arquitectos from 2013 to 2015. Together with Diogo Seixas Lopes, he was joint chief curator of the 2016 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, The Form of Form, and head of the architecture programmes at Garagem Sul / Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon (2017–23). He is the author of various books, including The Anatomy of the Architectural Book (Lars Müller Publishers/Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2016), Vitruvius Without Text (gta Verlag, 2022), and Architecture Follows Fish: An Amphibious History of the North Atlantic (MIT Press, 2024). His books have been translated into Portuguese, French, and Japanese. Currently he is a senior researcher in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto, where he is the principal investigator for the project Fishing Architecture, funded through a European Research Council Consolidator Grant.