Life Indoors: How our homes are shaping our bodies and our planet 9811651752, 9789811651755

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Life Indoors How our homes are shaping our bodies and our planet Rachael Wakefield-Rann

Life Indoors

Rachael Wakefield-Rann

Life Indoors How our homes are shaping our bodies and our planet

Rachael Wakefield-Rann Institute for Sustainable Futures University of Technology Sydney Ultimo, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-16-5175-5 ISBN 978-981-16-5176-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Retro AdArchives/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

As I write the first words of this manuscript, I am sitting in Heathrow Terminal 3, awaiting my expedited flight home to Australia amid the COVID 19 outbreak. Like pandemics and epidemics before it, this virus’ success is bringing into sharp relief the invisible processes that link us in ways we hadn’t previously appreciated. The ways that different groups of people over time have imagined invisible yet ubiquitous ‘things’, such as microbes, genes and chemicals, has been a preoccupation of much of my research. Different ideas about the boundaries, trajectories, and intentions of these micro-agents, and the material proxies that allow us to sense their presence—such as foul odours or discoloured surfaces—have been an enduring interest. The ways diverse groups of people individually and collectively imagine the forms, intentions and mutability of microscopic things tells us something about how they understand matter and life, and the relationship between them. What is at stake here is not only how the relationship between bodies, and the environments that support them, are understood, but how we envisage and attempt to construct immunity to the many perceived dangers of the world.

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In this book I look at how the kinds of things have been made perceptible, and those that haven’t, have influenced our relationship with our most intimate habitats: our homes. Homes are intended to provide a form of immunity against the dangers of the world. The ways they have been designed and assembled into cities reveal much about dominant cultural ideas of health, wellbeing, immunity and disease at specific times and places, and what and who they have missed and marginalised. At a time when research across scientific fields is beginning to suggest that many of these cocoons of immunity we have built for ourselves may actually be making us sick, I propose it is time to look beyond minor structural tweaking to reexamine the concepts of health, immunity, bodies and the environment that have been layered into our cities and buildings over the past two centuries. Like much of my research, this book sits at the crossroads between multiple disciplines that are often disconnected, yet generate insights of great mutual consequence. Life Indoors assembles and synthesises recent and historical research from the history of medicine, design and architecture, the philosophy of biology, process philosophy, microbial ecology, human ecology, complex systems research, the sociology of health and sustainability, geography and anthropology to probe the classifications and abstractions that produce ideas of healthy dwelling. When considered together, this body of work suggests an ancient metaphysical question: is it more helpful to make sense of the world in terms of bounded building blocks or ever-changing processes? This may seem like an abstract, and even irrelevant, debate to call upon at first. However, as I will show throughout this book, the ways we conceptualise the world at its most basic level underpins how it is theorised, measured, the metaphors used to comprehend it, and ultimately how we intervene in it to benefit ourselves and others. Ultimo, Australia

Rachael Wakefield-Rann

Acknowledgements

This book was written on the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri, Gadigal, and Wodi Wodi peoples. I want to begin by acknowledging and paying my deepest respect to their Elders past and present. I recognise and respect their continuing culture and the great contributions they make to this country. I know my (very partial) engagement with the Aboriginal cosmologies of Australia in the process of researching this book represents the beginning of a lifelong interest. A few more brief thank yous: first to my family and friends, for providing me with space, food and patience as I scribbled away over weekends and early mornings—particularly mum and David, and the Lee family—but most importantly Tom, for the constant emotional, intellectual and material sustenance. The core ideas and impetus to write this book began bubbling away in the back of my mind as I was finalising my Ph.D. I would like to thank Dena Fam and Susan Stewart for guiding me through that journey, and the truly unique transdisciplinary research program offered by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. My

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confidence and commitment to transgress disciplinary silos owes much to these influences. The early threads of this book were pulled together during a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, in conversation with Jennifer Gabrys and others from the Citizen Sense research team. Some of my early ideas were also tested at the wonderful Chemical Kinships panel organised by Angeliki Balayannis and Emma Garnett at the Royal Geographers Society—Institute of British Geographers Conference in 2019. Finally, I would like the thank the exceptionally careful and generous reviewers tasked with scrutinising the proposal and final manuscript of this book, and my editor Josh Pitt. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to shepherd me through this process.

Contents

1

Introduction

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Pathogens as Substances: Hygiene, Germs and Domestic Design

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Inflammatory Urban Atmospheres: Biodiversity, Climate Control and the Materiality of Buildings

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4 The Ecology Makes the Poison: Toxicant Exposure, Antimicrobial Logic and the Biology of History

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A Relational Approach to Life Indoors

Index

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1 Introduction

Imagine a place that is occupied by thousands of organisms that can survive in temperatures above 80° Celsius, the temperature of volcanic hot springs. Living just nearby are another group that can only survive in sub-zero temperatures. Despite their proximity, it is likely these two communities have never met. This place is also regularly visited by a creature that can precipitate gold (Johnston et al. 2013) and another that is thought to make some people euphoric, while stopping others from breathing (Lowry et al. 2016). This place is never too hot and never too cold. It sometimes smells like forest, and at other times like an ice cream shop. This place is also bombed, intermittently, in isolated yet regular events that wipe out 99% of life in targeted areas, leaving only the most resilient, battle-hardened brutes to recolonise. These brutes sometimes roam and wreak havoc in other communities. There are also tricksters that if encountered at the wrong time and place, fool the explorer’s body into growing differently, setting their cells on a different trajectory that could make them prematurely lose their

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Wakefield-Rann, Life Indoors, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2_1

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memory, develop lumps in their organs or, god forbid, make them accumulate fat more easily. This place is comfortable, dangerous and infinitely mysterious. The place I am describing is not a fictitious dystopian world, but the typical ecology of a late modern urban apartment. In many industrialised nations, including most of Europe, North America and Australia, it is often estimated that the majority of us are spending 90% of our time in indoor ecosystems,1 not too dissimilar from the one described. Indoor environments represent the fastest growing biome2 on earth. Residential and commercial buildings around the world are currently estimated to make up to 6% of global ice-free land area (Hooke et al. 2012), reaching a similar status to grasslands and savannahs in terms of global coverage. In 2007, for the first time in history, more people lived in urban than rural areas, and by 2050, it is expected that two thirds of the world’s population will be spending most of their time in urban indoor environments (UN 2014). Despite the ubiquity of these urban indoor milieus, they remain largely uncharted. Unlike wild, exotic environments, such as rainforests and savannahs, the ecologies of mundane indoor environments have received scant research interest over the last century, with the exception of missions to find specific offending pathogens. This bias has begun to shift, as there are now a number of labs dedicated to exploring and charting the diversity of life inside.3 As with most early expeditions, the more that is discovered, the more it becomes clear the surface is only just beginning to be scratched. What can be said at this point, is that the ecologies of our constructed habitats are utterly unlike anything we have been part of throughout the course of human history. Science over the last three decades has increasingly revealed the degree to which our bodies and environments continuously permeate and shape one another; from the way we smell to the expression of our genes, it is becoming progressively evident that we co-constitute our environments and that the indoors is radically transforming our bodies. Indoor environments are altering human bodies in two interlinked registers: first, through the direct exposure of bodies to indoor ecological conditions, and second, through the modification of regional and

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global ecologies to meet the needs of indoor lifestyles, leading to diminished air and water quality, increasing heat in many urban areas, flows of toxicants4 and reduced biodiversity, among other factors that are shaping what human bodies are becoming in different places. One of the most intrepid indoor explorers, the microbial ecologist Rob Dunn, has jested that this transition reveals a radical new stage in the cultural evolution of our species: Homo indoorus, the indoor human (2018). Our prehistorical ancestors dwelled for millions of years in ephemeral nests built from sticks and other materials in the environment and occupied by seasonal environmental microbes. Around 20,000 years ago structures that approximate houses began to show up around the globe, primarily dome-like dwellings built from local materials such as sticks and bones. Based on the micro-ecologies of similar structures that exist now, in places such as the Brazilian Amazon (Ruiz-Calderon et al. 2016) and Papua New Guinea (Martínez et al. 2015), scientists have inferred that microbes associated with the human body, and its detritus, started to accumulate in these enclosed spaces for the first time. Around 12,000 years ago, when the first square, internally partitioned houses began to appear, and the density of settlements increased, the ecological characteristics of the indoors and outdoors began to diverge. Now, many urban dwellings, and particularly apartments, are sealed off from the environmental microorganisms with which we co-evolved, and instead host a motley of unusual characters that are completely new to our bodies. The lava dwelling creatures I described earlier are a genus of bacteria called Thermus, which naturally live in volcanic geysers, but have begun to take up residence in the hot water heaters of buildings (Brock and Freeze 1969). They are joined by other extremophiles that live in freezing, acidic and chemically inhospitable environments in our homes (Savage et al. 2016). Dunn explains that houses represent a microcosm of virtually every ecosystem on Earth—the driest, the most acidic, the hottest, the coldest and wettest. At the same time, it has become increasingly difficult for microbes with which we have co-evolved for millennia—those that reside in soil, plants rivers and other animals—to enter into urban living spaces and bodies. Much is still unknown about the manifold ways that these novel ecologies are affecting our bodies, however, there is now substantial

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research linking the absence of our microbial ‘old friends’, and a lack of microbial biodiversity, with a number of allergic and autoimmune conditions including asthma, food allergies, Type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel syndrome, among others—suggesting these ecologies play a pivotal role in training our bodies to be in the world (Rook and Brunet 2005). I will go into these changes in greater detail in Chapter 3, suffice to say for now that the new communities of organisms with which we cohabitate indoors, are radically transforming what we are. Our bodies are not only having to contend with new living companions (if that wasn’t enough), the tricksters noted earlier refer to a range of chemical toxicants that entered our lives for the first time, for the most part, in the late twentieth century (Roberts et al. 2008). The postSecond World War chemical ‘boom’ saw particular classes of chemicals transition from industrial applications, to become central to the functionality of many products that now populate our daily lives (Weschler 2009; Altman et al. 2008; MacKendrick 2018). Many of these chemicals are known or suspected to be mutagenic, carcinogenic, neurotoxic and endocrine (hormone) disrupting, and do not resemble substances that we have cohabited with any other point in history (MacKendrick 2018; Diamanti-Kandarakis et al. 2009). As I will discuss further in detail in Chapter 4, unlike poisons found more commonly in pre-twentieth century indoor spaces, such as lead and arsenic, many of these postindustrial chemicals have been found to ‘participate’ in human and other animal bodies in ways that are challenging traditional categorisations and understandings of toxicity, dosage limits and timescales of harm (Liboiron 2015). They travel, persist and accumulate in ways that connect distant ecologies around the world. The myth that indoor spaces, and the practices conducted within them, are private, discreet and bounded from the ecologies they are imbibing from, and disgorging into, is no longer tenable. The stories of late industrial microbial and chemical ecologies are not separate, but intimately entwined. Microbes evolve in response to the chemicals and materials in their environments. The application of antimicrobial chemicals has been likened to dropping napalm on a surface—the intermittent bombing I referred to at the beginning of this chapter. They annihilate entire ecosystems, leaving only the species

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that have developed resistance to recolonise; a trait that evolutionary pressure is increasingly conferring on our small indoor companions. To make matters worse, many of the antimicrobials now commonly used in cleaning products are endocrine disrupting5 —they are both tricksters and brutes of the indoors. The ways that these late modern chemo-microbial ecologies act and cause harm is highly contingent. Rather than affecting bodies in consistent, predictable and linear ways, these ecologies have different impacts depending on numerous factors related to how they interact in the environment and in the body, for how long, and the developmental stage of bodies exposed. These modes of interaction are undermining not only traditional conceptions of environmental health and hygiene that focus on the extermination of germs, but also broader understandings of how human bodies relate to their environments and the relevance of assumed categories, such as species (Zoeller et al. 2012). To think through the new relations that characterise life indoors, I suggest that many diverse historical and conceptual threads must be braided together from different knowledge traditions. Unlike a traditional book introduction that sits within a single disciple, the interdisciplinary traditions that give insight into this unique ecological realm requires that multiple genres of knowledge are traversed and linked to show their mutual significance and interdependencies. As such, this introductory chapter is a little more substantial than most, as it endeavours to weave these often-disparate backgrounds together to contextualise the events and ideas explored throughout the book. The final third of the chapter then provides an introduction to the critical philosophical concepts that I suggest sit at the heart of current urban indoor ecological configurations. Please take tea breaks as required.

Late Industrial Pathogen Ecologies The rise of late industrial indoor maladies, and the challenge to traditional notions of pathogenicity and bodily integrity they represent, can be usefully thought of in terms of a late industrial pathogen ecology.6 Since the 1980s, pathogen or disease ecology has emerged from a niche

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interest of infectious disease experts in postcolonial settler societies to a key concept used to investigate complex patterns of disease emergence (Anderson 2004). Otter et al. (2015, 710) describe pathogen-ecology systems as “…an actor-network or assemblage composed of specific environments, disease agents, and bodies”. They use this concept with reference to epidemiologist Tony McMichael’s (2001) schematisation of four overlapping waves of the ecological history of human disease. In brief, these include: (1) The period following early human settlement in the Neolithic, characterised by higher aggregate populations and interaction with animals, promoting greater microbial transfer between animals and humans; (2) The period in which greater contact between Eurasian populations emerged resulting in microbes being transmitted between cultures, including the Black Death; (3) In the period after 1500 CE, diseases such as smallpox were distributed around the world via trade and colonial expansion and (4) The period beginning in the later part of the nineteenth century involving large-scale ecological and technological transformations. This latter wave is characterised by ecological disruption, including loss of forest ecosystems and biodiversity, pollution of surface and ground water, among others, associated with large infrastructure development, rapid urbanisation, the creation and use of new materials and industrialised agriculture. It is within this fourth wave of the ecological history of human disease, involving unprecedented ecological transformation and the move of much of humanity into urban indoor habitats, that this book is focused. Within this fourth wave, referred to by many now as the Anthropocene, the infectious diseases that have dominated for the preceding centuries have been reduced through vaccines and antibiotics in the developed world, the global population has grown, and life expectancy has increased. However, increased ecological disruption, human inequality and poverty, in combination with increased global connectivity, have given rise to an unprecedented amount of microbial and pollutant circulation between disparate global ecologies. The hyperconnectivity of microbial flows via technologically enabled infrastructure is painfully evident in a COVID 19 blighted 2021. As noted above, this Anthropocene pathogen ecology is also characterised by a rise in allergies

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and atopic disease associated with an absence of required ecological interactions, the spread of antimicrobial resistance through global microbial populations and flows of new materials and toxicants that participate in and transform bodies in novel ways (McMichael 2001). This book dives into the alien, yet deeply intimate habitats of late modern urban dwellers, to ask how indoor home environments have become key sites in still emerging late industrial pathogen ecologies. A vast proportion of the planet’s ecosystems have been modified and raided to service life indoors. Our dwellings directly embody cultural expectations regarding family, leisure, nourishment, rest, work and health. The sinks, showers, ovens, air conditioners, computers and televisions developed to service these expectations in urban dwellings and their associated practices have diverted vast amounts of energy, water, organisms and materials to their service. The aspects of urban homes that have been standardised across the world today are products of what has been considered important to dwelling over time in particular places. Looking at these environments, and the constituent elements that have survived and proliferated, tells us stories about family, work, race, gender and class, but also about health, disease and immunity, and at a deeper level, about how our bodies are connected to the environments they inhabit. The emergence of late industrial pathogen ecologies suggests that some crucial processes have been missed in dominant ways of thinking about the ways bodies relate to their environments. The rise in allergic and atopic disease, obesity, diabetes and multiple cancers in urban populations, and the emergence of phenomena such as antimicrobial resistance across microbial populations associated with humans, are the result of processes that have been obscured. It is my contention in this book that the systemic relationships that have given rise to these maladies have not only, or even primarily, been made imperceptible due to insufficient scientific instrumentation, but through the categories used to divide up and think about the world within a dominant strand of Enlightenment thought over the past two centuries. Following Linda Nash, I propose that the separation of bodies from their environments and the location of disease in discreet pathogens and contaminants, has made many of the situated ecological causes of disease invisible, and promoted the illusion that ‘…environments can be manipulated toward other ends without

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seriously considering how those manipulations will ramify in bodies’ (Nash 2008, 655). Much has been written about the division of the world into nature and culture during the Enlightenment period, and the social and ecological consequences of powerful agents acting on these beliefs (For e.g. Latour 2012). In this book I am interested in how the conception of the world that underpins this tradition, a tradition that divides the world into discreet, essentialised interacting substances, has obscured many of the dynamic processes at multiple spatio-temporal scales that are producing perverse indoor ecological outcomes. More importantly, I am interested in how a more processual ecological sensibility might be instructive in helping us to understand late industrial pathogen ecologies, than categorisations linked to bounded, essentialised substances or things. Ecological modifications associated with a modernist imperative are obviously not restricted to the indoors, indeed most of the literature interested in this historical force are concerned with large-scale ecological modifications.7 However, I suggest that an investigation of urban indoor ecologies makes explicit and challenges long-held categories and assumptions that have shaped concepts such as immunity, disease, the body, and nature in unique and valuable ways. This is not least because the indoors is the primary habitat in which many of us now dwell, but also because normative indoor practices, and their infrastructural, cultural, economic and political influences, structure flows of resources, toxicants and energy at a global scale. For these reasons, I propose that the indoors is also a critical leverage point from which to start thinking about what might need to shift in order to develop concepts of dwelling and immunity that are able to anticipate emerging ecological health issues that connect everyday lives to globally significant actors and ecological events. I am not suggesting that a metaphysical shift will suddenly make everything apparent, clear and solvable. However, I do suggest that the categories and abstractions used to make sense of the world have real implications for how we consider the relationship between human bodies and the environment, the boundaries between them, processes of causation, what needs to be managed and how and who is responsible for

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what. I propose that disease and pathogenicity can be decoupled from essentialised things and seen as emergent properties of dynamic systems by refocusing attention on current arrangements as a manifestation of complex ecological processes. By drawing attention to how the dominance of a substance metaphysics has contributed to the obfuscation of certain processes and relationships that produce disease, I propose one can begin to productively speculate about how a different set of abstractions may be able to foster more beneficial human-ecological relations. My hope is that such a shift will help enable a move towards the creation and maintenance of indoor environments that are sensitive to broader ecological dependencies and more akin to gardening than napalm bombing. The carving of the world into substances is not, of course, universal. Many Buddhist traditions of thought, and Indigenous traditions across North America, Australia and the Pacific, understand the world in terms of processes that cannot be disentangled from their things. This is reflected in cosmologies and languages based on becoming rather than being, of verbs not nouns. Linguist Matthew Bronson records Sakéj Henerson saying his people can speak Mikmáq all day without uttering a single noun (Bronson 2017). Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (2008, 73) highlights the centrality of relationships rather than substances in Indigenous cosmologies across Canada and Australia, stating that ‘…reality is not an object but a process of relationships…’ and that ‘an object or thing is not as important to one’s relationship to it…’ This is exemplified in the Cree language, in which, for example, the literal translation into English for a chair would be ‘the thing you sit on’—the use is described, rather than the object named. This more relational ontology has profound implications for the way ‘the environment’ is treated as inextricably entwined with culture and history. Mohawk scholar Sandra Styres (2018, 27) explains that the Indigenous concept of Land extends well beyond the environmental objects of western ontologies: ‘Land as an Indigenous philosophical construct is both space (abstract) and place/land (concrete); it is also conceptual, experiential, relation-al, and embodied’. While in this book I focus primarily on the hegemonic strains of thought within the cultural West that have driven the development of,

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and global envelopment by, late modern techno-capsule dwellings, it is important to emphasise that holders of alternative cosmological traditions may provide valuable guidance for how the world may be actively considered in processual, relational terms. I return to these ideas in the concluding chapter. In the remainder of this chapter I will take an abridged tour through the genesis of the urban apartments that will be the focus of this book, and how others have theorised the move of so much of humanity into such enclosures. I will follow this by briefly introducing the dominant medical ontology that has influenced notions of immunity and healthy dwelling in the cultural West for the past two centuries, and how its fundamental categories are beginning to be challenged by recent thinking within disciplines such as immunology, endocrinology, genetics, oncology and microbiology. The central contention at the heart of this book is that the dynamic processes that produce pathogen ecologies at different spatio-temporal scales have been made imperceptible by particular abstractions used to think about the world, leading to perverse environmental modifications and modes of dwelling. To clarify this proposition and its significance, in the final section of this introduction I will give a brief overview of the ancient debate between substance and process-oriented conceptualisations of the world, and why I propose it has re-emerged as central to understanding late industrial pathogen ecologies.

The March of the Middle Classes into Urban Apartments You may say, rightly, in response to all of this ‘but surely indoor environments are not all the same, we don’t all live in cloned domestic structures, and don’t the characteristics of local geographies matter?’ While the types of structures that humans’ dwell in around the world are infinitely diverse, there are trends that have led to the proliferation of particular styles of dwelling and consequently indoor environments throughout the industrialised world, and particularly since the late twentieth century.

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A dominant characteristic of this transition is increasing urbanisation and the rapid increase in medium and high-rise apartments. In 2018, the most urbanised regions of the world were North America (82%), the Caribbean and Latin America (81%), Europe (74%) and Oceania (68%) (UNDESA 2018). While urbanisation in these regions is likely to continue at a slower pace, India, China and Nigeria will together account for 35% of the projected growth of the world’s urban population between 2018 and 2050. As part of the global trend of economies moving from agricultural to service-based economies, the growth in the global middle class8 has become associated with rural to urban migration (Kharas 2017). At the end of 2016 there were about 3.2 billion people in the global middle class, and in the next few years, it is likely there might come an unprecedented point where a majority of the world’s population will live in middle-class households. Some estimates suggest about 140 million people are currently entering this economic bracket each year, which may rise to 170 million in the next couple of years (Kharas 2017). The majority of the world’s growing urban middle class will live in recently constructed urban apartments. My explorations here focus specifically on these types of late modern apartment dwellings that continue to colonise the horizontal and vertical space of expanding urban centres around the world. These dwelling ecologies are typically hyperconnected to media and communication networks, yet predicated on the idea of selective physical separation from potential material, atmospheric and social intrusions from the outside. The structures I focus on in this book have a range of important ecological characteristics in common, they are: in established or growing urban centres; built and furnished with modern composite materials such as concrete, treated timber, melamine, gypsum, plastic, carpet and tiles; climatically controlled; fitted with a kitchen, bathroom, living and sleeping spaces and are able to be shut off from exterior sensory interruptions, with varying degrees of efficacy. While remaining heterogenous and embedded in local milieus, the norms that govern what buildings in global urban centres should look like, the functions they should fulfil and how they are constructed no longer speak primarily to vernacular styles and localised cultural and environmental conditions. Like other metropolitan structures, there has

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been an international standardisation of apartment forms, accompanied and enabled by the globalisation of building practices, industries, technological networks and aspects of normative domestic culture from the industrialised West. The latter part of the twentieth century, and particularly the 1980s and 1990s, saw the internationalisation of architectural and developer firms and the rise of urban development from a distance (McNeill 2009). The export of high-rise building structures, often from former colonial powers to already colonised landscapes, involved the spread of generic material and structural elements and spatial configurations. Although firms were conscious of avoiding accusations of urban homogenisation, their inclusion of vernacular aesthetic elements and iconic designs were often largely superficial, while the overall building characterises (modern materials, glass facades, air-conditioning, carpet and room configurations) remained stable (McNeill 2009). Urban design has also been driven by a growing urbanism in the latter half of the twentieth century, defined broadly as ‘the social and behavioural characteristics of urban living which are being extended across society as a whole as people adopt urban values, expectations and lifestyles’ (Zukin 1989). Julie Podmore describes this acceleration of urbanisation in terms of a ‘SoHo syndrome’ that saw the rise of New York-style apartments in Sydney, Montreal and elsewhere: a spatial and cultural process that involves more than simply copying the aesthetic of SoHo as a redevelopment strategy … cities are ‘locales’… [and SoHo Syndrome is] more than a universal valorization strategy: it is a socio-cultural process that involves a complex web of relationships between place, identity and the media, that is diffused to, and (re)produced in, divergent inner-city locations. (Podmore 1998, 286)

SoHo Syndrome is characterised by a form of dwelling that involves minimal engagement with the locale and its histories, and enables new forms of escape and diversion that produce novel kinds of exclusionary urbanism (Shaw 2006). While it has been a cosmopolitan liberal philosophy with high ideals of global interconnection and equalisation that has driven this process, an emergent characteristic of this Syndrome has been the ‘Harlemization’ of resident communities in gentrifying

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areas, for example, Shaw refers to the marginalisation of the incumbent city-based Indigenous community in Redfern that accompanied the expansion of central Sydney (Shaw 2000). The cosmopolitanism driving urban renewal has noble ambitions in many ways, yet it also has a tendency to marginalise other perspectives and ways of living. Although always encountering forms of local resistance, the notion of globalisation as a homogenising force, a form of colonisation by a narrow set of norms, is evidently manifest in urban ecological arrangements. While the shine of globalised urbanism as a desirable and even emancipatory force has lost its lustre in the face of growing inequality and the suboptimal living conditions for many city dwellers, the countervailing forces of population growth and the concentration of employment opportunities in cities has meant that urbanisation led by large, often international, architecture and developer firms continues at pace. I draw the boundary of my focus here around urban dwellings of the rising global middle classes for two key reasons: they are the fastest growing domestic building type globally, and they provide the aspirational models for those moving up into this ballooning international class. Moreover, focusing on these types of structures helps us understand what normative ideas are behind the categories and classifications used to quantify what a healthy home is, what they exclude, how they interact with localised understandings of health and dwelling and what this tells us about globalised conceptions of the relationship between human bodies, dwellings and disease embedded in generic late industrial urban apartments. The types of apartments occupied by the urban middle classes also represent some of the most maladaptive indoor ecologies; environments populated with masses of dead human cells, new companions such as cockroaches and dust mites, altered microbial ecologies and an inconceivable load of novel chemicals that are new to human habitats. The interior microbiome of a high-rise apartment more closely resembles the international space station than it does the dwellings of our ancestors (Dunn 2018). This characterisation of middle-class problems associated with indoor environments does not mean to detract from the many forms of wilful ignorance and violence that continue to expose communities to

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unhealthy and dangerous living conditions through acts of prejudice, greed and disregard. Ensuring that companies do not pollute water and soil, that buildings are not built with toxic materials or materials mined through slave labour or that basic maintenance and quality standards are followed to prevent issues of persistent damp and mould, do not require a paradigmatic shift to be resolved. They require greater accountability and a redistribution of power and wealth. The slow but wilful forms of violence that disproportionately poison the places inhabited by people living in third and fourth world conditions that do not have white skin has been compellingly addressed by a number of scholars and activists,9 many of whom have shown how polluting peoples’ homes and resources represent insidious forms of colonialism and racism. This book is concerned with questions that are contingent on, but diverge somewhat from this literature: if we are to consider the idea of healthy dwellings for all, what do they look like and what is their relationship with the cultures and ecologies in which they are embedded? And how can this enduring question be reframed in light of emerging pathogen ecologies and the deep intertwining of bodily and ecological processes they suggest?

Theorisations of Capsular Living The movement of so much of humanity into indoor socio-ecological spaces from the mid-nineteenth century has been theorised in various ways. The genesis of the domestic spaces of urban apartments that we might recognise today can be traced largely to this time, when Northern European and American housing became more private and insulated from the surrounding environment (Daunton 1983). People became more physically close, but materially partitioned from others. As I discuss in Chapter 2, this is partly associated with the noisy, odorous urban chaos that accompanied industrialisation and the mass migration of the rural poor to cities, combined with the emerging knowledge of links between unsanitary conditions and disease. Reflecting on the seeming trend of Europeans cocooning themselves in private apartments, Parisian Government Architect César Daly reframed

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the role of the dwelling as a space that should both protect families from the hostile urban exterior, and bend to more of the requirements and desires of families within its walls, suggesting that the house had become a kind of envelope or clothing for the family, that simultaneously swaddled and yielded to their bodily movements (Hartzell 2009, 55). Also responding to an increasingly hostile streetscape in late nineteenth century Paris, Walter Benjamin similarly theorised the retreat indoors, reflecting that: The original form of all dwelling is existence not in the house but in the shell…the shell bears the impression of its occupant. In the most extreme instance, the dwelling becomes a shell… (the nineteenth century) conceived the residence as a receptacle for the person, and it encased him with all his appurtenances so deeply in the dwelling’s interior that one might be reminded of the inside of a compass case, where the instrument with all its accessories lies embedded in deep, usually violet folds of velvet”. (Benjamin 2002 [1939], 220)

More recently, Chris Otter has also conceptualised the transition to late modern indoor dwellings in terms of ‘encapsulation’ (Otter 2017). He proposes discreet capsules as the exemplary form of late modern dwelling; designed to ensure prevailing standards of comfort are met, and that the needs defined by norms for eating, bathing, entertainment, raising a family and increasingly work, are catered to. From the early twentieth century, homes themselves became more internally differentiated into what Otter terms ‘subcapsular spaces’ with different functions. Industrial progress in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also encouraged an optimistic vision that dwellings could be emancipated from their porous, corruptible materials, rooted in the dank earth, and become optimised machines designed to reflect the requirements of the hygienic modern body. The exemplary spatial form for this transition into capsules was the modern vehicle. The perhaps overly quoted, yet undeniably influential Swiss modernist architect Le Corbusier was inspired by cars, ocean liners and trains, while others such as architect and utopian visionary Buckminster Fuller also saw vehicles as the epitome of independent cellular living ‘we will all have houses to live in

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very much as we have automobiles to ride in’ a machine ‘with a replacement value, a machine which can be set down practically in any location’ (Fuller 2001, 84). Indoor urban encapsulation embodies both an imperative towards optimised, highly controllable, hygienic space, and the chaotic reality of life in the sensory circus of urban centres. Initially, and often still, new urban residences are built on land that is reclaimed from industrial or other non-residential purposes, or from less affluent communities that resided there prior to urban expansion. They also rub up against manifold other commercial, entertainment, criminal and automotive activities that create a cacophony of noise, odour, light and other existential disturbances. This situation has produced a desire in the affluent and aspiring classes moving into such areas to be able to selectively seal themselves away from their surrounding environment. This manifests in both material fortresses for the purposes of security—underground garages, security lifts, thick glass, alarm systems—but also attempts at creating a kind of sensory citadel, in which one can prevent the assault of visual, particulate, olfactory and noise pollution. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (2016) extends this notion of late modern dwellings as immunity spaces—dwelling is a defensive measure by which an area is isolated from invaders. This immunity practice encompasses not only the will to insulate oneself from sensory assault, but all kinds of disturbances and interruptions. In late twentieth century homes, ‘The dwelling becomes an ignoring machine or an integrous defence mechanism: the basic right to ignore the outside world finds its architectural support here’ (Sloterdijk 2016, 504). Encapsulation has not been restricted to private spaces. This regime of dwelling fits into what Keller Easterling identifies as globalised zones characterised by ‘… a clean, relaxed, air-conditioned, infrastructure-rich urbanism that is more familiar to the world than the context of its host country…’ (Easterling 2014, 67). Sloterdijk (2016, 334) refers to these hyper-controlled ecological zones as ‘Anthropogenic islands’. The affluent urban dweller may now move from one climate-controlled island to another, from shopping malls, offices, cinemas, cafes and cars without having to experience the local ecological conditions. Discomfort and climatic variability are no longer tolerated.

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While I have proffered apartments as the prototypical late modern dwelling, stand alone or semi-detached new dwellings embody many of the same values and ecological characteristics. If you travel to the urban fringes of Sydney, Las Vegas or Shanghai, you will encounter rapidly erected housing developments populated by large, uniform dwellings, sealed against the outside environment and jammed with modern conveniences, often with minimal garden space or established trees, and a large 4WD car with dual-zone automatic climate control parked in the driveway. In Australia, this species of dwelling is often referred to as the McMansion, and it is the choice of many young families seeking space within reach of their urban jobs. While these dwelling forms are relevant, the examples employed in the book will primarily focus on the higher density, technologically enabled, well-sealed, modern apartments—what I will refer to as late modern techno-capsules, for the sake of brevity—that the aspiring global urban middle classes are moving into.

Imperceptible Processes The way cultures throughout history have understood the relationship between bodies, disease and the environment has always influenced the way dwellings are constructed. Well prior to the evolution of the late modern capsular dwelling, fragile-bodied mammals erected abodes to function as extended immune systems. At a minimum, structures are intended to protect us from extreme temperatures, and the various creatures that prey upon us, like our ancestors’ domes of sticks and bones. However, as human societies became more complex and new diseases of density emerged, dwellings and urban areas, came to more explicitly materialise the dominant ideas of the era within which they were built, including the contemporary ways of understanding how disease affects the body. In any given time and culture, the way the relationship between bodies and disease is conceptualised—of what human bodies are affected by and how—makes some processes and agents involved in disease perceptible, while obscuring others. The disease ontology that has dominated Western scientific medicine since the late nineteenth century has framed

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the process of disease causation in a way that makes some agents, such as individual microbes, perceptible, while obscuring other important interactions such as cumulative toxicant exposure. Microbes are framed as concrete essential entities that can be linked directly to the manifestation of disease symptoms in the body. The effects of chemical exposures, on the other hand, generally manifest as a cluster of conditions that often cannot be linked to a single causative agent. The expectation within this dominant medical tradition that the causes of disease should be essential things, that can be understood in isolation and consistently manifest in bodies, has engendered what Michelle Murphy (2006) has termed a ‘regime of perceptibility’. Historical circumstances—including cultural, political, scientific and technological arrangements, measurement instruments and classification systems—influence the types of things and relationships that are able to be conceptualised and perceived at a given point in time. With reference to the ideas embedded in the development of ventilation engineering in buildings, Murphy (2006: 24) states that: Produced by assemblages that are anchored in material culture, regimes of perceptibility establish what phenomena become perceptible, and thus what phenomena come into being for us … regimes of perceptibility populate our world with some objects and not others, and they allow certain actions to be performed on those objects.

The regime of perceptibility that has dominated Western public health since the late nineteenth century has made germs (as discreet agents of disease) the focus of common definitions, measurements and performances of hygiene, while other determinants of health have remained contested or largely invisible. The central concern of this book is not only that specific entities have been elevated above others as objects of attention, but that focus has remained on objects per se. As I will discuss in detail in the following chapter, an ontological conception of disease that presupposes the invasion of one discreet, bounded body by another discreet specified entity, has dominated not only the Western metaphysics of health and medicine, but body/environment relations more broadly for around the last two centuries. This metaphysics is in the process of being challenged by accounts of body/environment

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interactions that highlight the plasticity, porosity and co-constitution of bodies within ecologies, and the complex interrelationships that generate pathogenicity (Méthot and Alizon 2015). In other words, I suggest that it is not only objects and agents that are made imperceptible, but the complex dynamic processes that enable, for example, toxicants to cause harm in some bodies, in some places, and not others. It is the preoccupation with identifying inherently harmful things, as opposed to the ecology of interacting processes, that I want to address here. Dominant ways of theorising and categorising disease, and its causal mechanisms, are important because they guide practices of medicine, public health, government regulation and how we construct, maintain and live in our cities and dwellings. They also play a central role in designating how responsibility for preventing harm is allocated and bounded. For example, historian Richard Evans details how the miasma theory of disease (detailed in Chapter 2 of this book) was adopted as a preferred explanation for disease epidemics, over those that emphasised personto-person transmission, by certain European political leaders because it placed responsibility and blame on the environment, rather than the government (Evans 2005). Thinking within disciplines such as immunology, endocrinology, genetics, oncology and microbiology, among others, has undergone a shift over the past three decades regarding the processes and things that are considered relevant to immunity and dwelling. This shift has not only made additional processes that link our habitats to our bodies more perceptible, but brought into question linear conceptualisations of immunity and disease that rely on the identification of essentialised pathogens or poisons. It is increasingly being understood that pathogenicity and toxicity are, in many situations, emergent properties of dynamic ecologies. If we take this perspective, challenges to immunity come to be conceptualised not at the boundary of a defined individual, but at multiple scales of connected ecological systems, from the gut of an organism to the planet; as Karl Johnson (1993, 55) has provocatively declared that the Earth has become ‘…a progressively immunocompromised ecosystem’.

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The shift within immunology from an individuality-based conception of biology to one that includes ecological communities is particularly notable. From its inception, immunology has been interested in the establishment and management of biological identity (Manuel Igea 2015). From the time the term started to be used with reference to the body, immunity referred to the function of preserving the integrity of the organism as an individual. Immune functions were therefore understood in terms of a persistent, stable identity defined in terms of autonomy and insularity (Tauber 2016). The recent conceptual expansion of immunity has involved letting go of the vision of the immune system as a defence system—of one concrete specified entity protecting itself against others—to one that includes mechanisms for assimilation and cohabitation between multiple organisms to create a stable ecology. In this way, immunity is an emergent property of a symbiotic ecosystem. In the example of humans and their microbial symbionts, the boundary between the human genetic body and microbial bodies has traditionally been considered as a line of defence. This frontline has been reconceptualised as an ecotone—the transition area at which biological communities meet and integrate, and the role of human and microbial cells have been reframed as agents of communication and information exchange (Tauber 2016). In acknowledging the larger context and processes of an immune encounter, the ecological position challenges the boundaries between parasitism, commensalism and mutualism. Instead, it offers a view in which labels like pathogen, commensal and opportunist are superseded by a focus on interacting communities, and microbial virulence is explained as an emergent property of a range of organismal and environmental factors (Casadevall and Pirofski 2015). This shift in thinking is well illustrated through the story of one of the most ubiquitous and vilified human microbial companions. In 1983 the young Australian gastroenterologist Barry Marshall famously drank a hearty broth of the bacteria Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) to definitively prove it was the agent responsible for causing gastric ulcers, and put to bed the prevailing belief that stress was responsible for its development (Weintraub 2010). The predicted gastritis, stinky breath and ultimately ulcers manifested, thus establishing the link between gastric ulcers and H. pylori, and earning Marshall and his collaborator Robin

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Warren the Nobel Prize in 2005. However, further research into the role of H. pylori in gastric conditions revealed surprising results. In certain populations the bacteria consistently produced gastric ulcers, and sometimes gastric cancers, while in others it did not. In particular, high infection rates over large areas of Africa, Asia and Central and South America were not accompanied by a higher incidence of gastric and duodenal ulcers or cancer (Miwa et al. 2002; Holcombe et al. 1992). This phenomenon stumped scientists for decades, leading it to be called the “continental enigma” (Sitaraman 2015). Even populations living in close geographic proximity displayed vastly different outcomes. For example, research comparing populations of urban Bengali Indians and neighbouring Santhal and Oraon tribal populations showed comparable H. pylori prevalence, yet there were much higher rates of gastric ulceration in the urban Bengali population (Saha et al. 2009). It is now thought that the differential effects of H. pylori infection are related to a range of contextual factors, including the genetics of the host, the age of the host when infection occurs and diet, among others. Indeed, it has even been proposed that early life exposure to H. pylori may confer some protection against the development of allergies later in life. The story of H. pylori is just one example of how it is more useful to understand disease, even when it relates to known pathogens, as an emergent property of complex and dynamic ecologies, in which outcomes depend not only on what is interacting, but how, where and for how long. This shift to understanding immunity in terms of an entire ecology brings into question familiar labels such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ that are commonly used to make sense of how microbes or other species will affect us. The microbes in yoghurt are ‘good’ or ‘friendly’ while H. pylori is ‘bad’. This is important because these labels, and their implied understanding of disease as the infection of one singular, discreet body by another essentially pathogenic or toxic entity, have informed how dwellings have been constructed in the industrial West since the midnineteenth century. Ontological theories of disease—in which agents of disease are observable, regular and autonomous entities—and in particular germ theory, have encouraged a vision of the healthy dwelling as one that can be sealed off, sterilised and completely controlled.

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This book begins with an account of how these ontological theories of disease have materialised in dominant architectural and urban planning, and examines how in attempting to create sterile capsules which promise easy identification and extermination of invading armies of pathogens, many of the most important ecological processes that contribute to immunity and disease have been made imperceptible. In the subsequent chapter I explore the implications of the ratcheting up of technologically networked cocoon living over the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries, including the development of novel building materials and urban expansion, global connectivity, climate control, information technology and other trends that have redefined dwelling. I look at the ramifications of some of these changes in the habitats of urbanites alongside the changes in scientific research practice and attention that begun to make the relational connections between bodies and their habitats more explicit. In particular, the concurrent emergence of new forms of micro-ecological investigation and the increasing prevalence of inflammatory diseases in wealthy urbanised parts of the world that began to collectively undermine dominant conceptualisations of pathogenicity as bound to discreet entities, and of human bodies as autonomous machines impervious to their local environs. In Chapter 4 I examine how the germ model of disease has been translated to practices of defining, measuring and managing toxicants as contaminants. To illustrate this extension of antimicrobial logic to encompass both the management of germs and other contaminants, I examine, you guessed it, antimicrobial compounds. Antimicrobials have produced distinctively transformative ecological effects through a combination of evolutionary pressure on microbial populations and other chemical affordances, such as endocrine disruption. The cumulative and emergent effects of antimicrobial practices on indoor ecologies and resident bodies are unprecedented, wideranging and alarming. The final chapter concludes with an examination of some of the approaches to ‘healthy’ and ‘sustainable’ dwelling that are emerging, and highlights the risks associated with not adopting a more processual set of categories. It then offers some speculative ideas about what these categories might look like and how they may be applied.

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Substance vs Process: Why Abstractions Matter In this book it is my hope to illustrate how particular ontological understandings of immunity and pathogenicity in the cultural West have facilitated the evolution of widespread indoor micro-ecologies that interact in unintended ways with human bodies, and the broader morethan-human ecosystems upon which we all depend. This ontology has elevated explanatory abstractions that make imperceptible many ecological processes and interactions that create pathogenic indoor environments. As I have hinted thus far, the problem underlying this prevailing approach to immunity is a metaphysical one: it concerns whether we attempt to understand the world in terms of interactions between consistent, concrete, essential entities or dynamic ecological processes in which entities are made and transformed via interaction. This ontological contest, commonly sketched as a duel between ‘substance’ and ‘process’ metaphysics, is not new but one of the most enduring in Western philosophy. From the time of Aristotle, and particularly for the past two centuries, a substance of metaphysics has been dominating this contest, permeating every aspect of Western thought, from science and medicine, to language and philosophy. However, recent scientific developments revealing the porosity, plasticity and ecological contingency of many things that were presumed to be bounded and discreet are highlighting the explanatory limitations of this ontology. The consequences of this shift are great. In recognition of the limitations of substance-based abstractions when trying to account for complex and changing systems, process ontologies have become increasingly popular within several fields across the physical and social sciences over the past quarter century due to its capacity to account for a range of emerging, complex phenomena. Some of these include biology (Nicholson and Dupré 2018), chemistry (Stein 2004), education (Taylor and Bovill 2018), psychology (Weber and Weekes 2009), organisation studies (Pallesen 2017), human geography (Stark 2017), the study of complex systems (Weinbaum 2015) and particularly the study of complex socio-ecological systems (Mancilla García et al.

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2020; Hertz et al. 2020; Cooke et al. 2016) among others. These positions see the world as composed of interdependent processes, constituted by their relations with many other processes. In this book I focus on the implications of a move from substance to process-oriented thinking as it relates specifically to two historically and ecologically entwined phenomena: the changing communities of microorganisms and chemical toxicants—antimicrobial toxicants in particular—in late modern techno-capsules. To begin to capture the dynamic system of relevant variables, I propose it is necessary to adopt a processual sensibility which does not attribute the causation of harm to essentialised entities or kinds of things,10 but the relational ecology in which they act. This book contributes to and extends the scholarship examining socio-ecological systems from a processual perspective, by attending to the indoors as a unique and under-theorised ecological zone. To clarify what I mean by the terms substance and process, I will briefly outline the key ideas in this ancient debate and some of the ways it is becoming relevant to understandings of body–environment relationships. As this may be unfamiliar territory for some readers, in the final part of this chapter I endeavour to show how, and the extent to which, a substance ontology has been embedded in Western modes of thought from the time of the ancients, and provide a number of examples of how this thinking has shaped our material reality. Western metaphysics has been dominated by a paradigm or ontology of substances from the time of Aristotle. While diverse in many ways, substance ontologies all hold the central proposition that the world is made up of discreet things or substances; basic building blocks that are stacked, arranged and reassembled to make up the world as we know it. These things have a set of specific qualities and well-defined temporal and spatial limits. By contract, process ontologies conceptualise the world in terms of a hierarchy of processes that operate and are stabilised at different spatial and temporal scales. Change and interaction, rather than stasis, are considered the most basic condition, and things are not considered to be fixed and essential, but always ‘becoming with’ the things around

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them through their ongoing relations; entities do not exist prior to the processes that continuously create them. The philosopher Celso Vieira (2017) suggests a helpful example to explain the divergence of these perspectives: the old adage that pessimists see the glass half empty and optimists see it half full. Asking if one sees the glass of water as half empty or half full assumes a fixed arrangement of things as the basis for interpretation. However, he proposes, what if the static, isolated conception of ‘a glass of water’ does not provide the required information? Surely we would all prefer an emptier glass that is filling up to a fuller glass that is emptying. Substance metaphysics is less equipped to account for information about change, while process metaphysics proposes that we should abandon framing the world in terms of static, isolated objects to focus on the processes that make and transform objects in time and space. The history of both of these perspectives within the Western philosophical tradition can be traced back to the ancients. Substance metaphysics took root in the pre-Socratic world with Leucippus, Democritus and Parmenides. These thinkers provided the basic conception of indivisible and unchanging material atoms upon which various notions of substance were formed in subsequent periods. While many elements of these philosophies have been forgotten or challenged, many of their central tenets, including that permanence is more fundamental than change, provided the foundations of Western metaphysics. Importantly, these ideas strongly influenced Plato, and his formation of the concept of eternal forms, and subsequently Aristotle, who grounded this notion of essential, unchangeable forms in entities that were observable in our world (trees, birds, humans) and have distinct knowable essences (Seibt 2020). In his taxonomy of nature, Aristotle placed all things into a hierarchy from lowest to highest. Beginning with substance, the primary characteristic upon which all others are built, he proposed ten categories into which every entity known falls under: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action and affection (Studtmann 2021). From this he established his syllogistic structure of a specified hierarchical mechanism, in which the first premise, substance, provides the basis for all subsequent claims. It is these Aristotelian categories which have had the greatest influence over how the world has been

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conceived in Western metaphysics. Aristotelian ontology not only differentiated substances as specific kinds by their essence, but set rules about the types of changes that a specific entity can undergo and how it relates to other things. As I will discuss in more detail below, this essentialist view has left an infinity of traces in Western thought, and the actions that flow from it. While the scientific revolution represented, in many ways, a turn away from Aristotelian thought, his substantialist ideas persisted and even strengthened through this period. Central to this strengthening was the re-emergence of atomism in the form of Newtonian physics. Irreducible, unchangeable, atoms were considered to be the building blocks of the world and life, with all macro-entities being composed of them. It was via this ontological grounding that the philosophical notion of ‘mechanism’ arose—the belief that natural wholes, including organisms, are like complicated machines made up of parts that do not have any intrinsic connection to one another. The term ‘mechanism’, deriving from ‘machine’ emerged in the seventeenth century and was promoted famously by Descartes, who understood mechanics as the basic components of the physical world: I should like you to consider that these functions (including passion, memory, and imagination) follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangement of its counter-weights and wheels.” (1972 [1633], 20)

While many of these crude formulations of early mechanist thought have been revised or superseded, particularly in physics, they have persisted other natural sciences. Its formulations of the ways that bodies relate to their environments, and the multifarious ideas and world shaping practices that flow from this type of supposition. Nicholson and Dupre (2018) argue that while the Newtonian mechanist worldview was quashed in physics with the advent of quantum mechanics,11 mechanist thought has become even more entrenched in biology.

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Nicholson and Dupre (2018) argue that it remains common to conceptualise protein complexes as molecular machines, cells as engineerable and the development of an organism as a computable execution of a deterministic genetic program. The paradigmatic understanding of an individual of a certain species is also still fundamentally based upon the idea that a species is an essentialised kind, despite the various challenges and refinements to this concept to account for interactivity and symbiosis over the twentieth century (see Margulis 1991). Although it is undeniable that the use of mechanism to explain particular biological phenomena has been a productive scientific approach, I will explain in the following sections why mechanistic explanations are inherently constrained in what they can explain about complex living systems. So what about the processual approach? The most well-known ancient philosopher in the Western tradition12 to advocate for a process perspective was Heraclitus, who famously extolled that one can never step into the same river twice, and that ‘change alone is unchanging’. However, conceptions of the world grounded in interrelating processes became unpopular and dormant within philosophical orthodoxy, science and everyday understandings of the world, due in large part to the rise of cartesian mechanism and Newtonian physics. It is also worth noting the substantial linguistic undercurrent that has affirmed the view of the world as composed of discreet, irreducible, bounded things and potentially helped this scientific paradigm gain popular acceptance. Substantialism is profoundly embedded in all Western languages, and has consequently shaped the ways thinkers in these cultures are taught to comprehend the universe from the time one learns to conceptually individuate objects through language, for example, when one learns to associate the noun house with a consistent picture of a house (Nicholson and Dupré 2018). In the most basic sense, the manifestation of substantialist thought in language can be seen as the predominance of nouns rather than verbs that encourage the thinker to create categories around ‘being’ rather than ‘becoming’, or ‘things’ rather than ‘processes’ (Hertz, Garcia, and Schlüter 2020). According to the linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980, 2) this cognitive patterning leads to the formation of the world as a kind of babushka doll, with each object conceived of as a container for ever smaller objects; they refer to this as a doctrine

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of ‘containment’. The convergence of a compelling scientific framework and concepts offered by language, subjugated processual ontologies and helped to give substantialist metaphysics a hegemonic status across philosophy, language, science, resource management, engineering and medicine, among other domains of life. In the twentieth century a number of notable thinkers emerged who resisted the substantialist perspective and begun advocating more vocally for the value of process metaphysics. These include its most famous twentieth century champion, Alfred North Whitehead, in addition to Charles Peirce, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Henri Bergson and William James, among others. Whitehead was an English mathematician, logician, educator and philosopher. In the early part of his career as a mathematician at Cambridge in the late nineteenth century, he is most well-known for co-authoring the Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell (Lowe 2020). In the latter part of his career based in Harvard, Whitehead turned his attention more resolutely to philosophy, and in particular the critique of scientific materialism and development of his process relational metaphysics. The pinnacle of Whitehead’s metaphysical work is often considered to be Process and Reality published in 1929, which presents his philosophy of nature emphasising the interdependence of all things. This theory was far more congenial to biology than to physics at the time, and was consequently adopted as the basis for the organicist movement in the early twentieth century (Nicholson and Dupré 2018). Despite his influence in these pockets, process relational metaphysics has remained fringe for most of the twentieth century. While still far from mainstream, processual metaphysics has gained increasing momentum in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly in the philosophy of science, due to an explosion of scientific developments which have exposed some of the limitations of a substance ontology when accounting for manifold emerging phenomena related to genetics, pathogenicity, evolution, immunity and ecological resilience, among others. A substance ontology has formed the basis of much modern science, and evidently served as a sufficient abstraction to help comprehend many phenomena. A reasonable question that may therefore emerge is ‘if it is so misguided, how come so much good science has been underpinned by

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it?’ This is a key point that was addressed by Whitehead (1978 [1929], 79), who explains that while the notion of material substance ‘expresses a useful abstract for many purposes of life’, its inability to account for transformative interrelations means it has critical explanatory limitations: The error does not consist in the employment of the word ‘substance’, but in the employment of the notion of an actual entity [as opposed to a useful abstraction] which is characterised by essential qualities and remains numerically one amidst the changes of accidental relations and of accidental qualities. (Whitehead 1978 [1929], 79)

A key example of this can be found in the use of mechanist concepts in biology mentioned above. The word ‘mechanism’ here broadly refers to a range of components that causally interact in a regular way that generates a particular phenomenon. Mechanist explanations can provide some useful insights because the things being described are constant enough given the temporality of the phenomena being investigated. Nicholson and Dupre (2018) give the example that one is able to account for the phenomenon of muscle contraction in these terms because the entities in the muscle fibre responsible for contraction are stable enough for the period over which it occurs. This stability allows the muscle to be treated like a thing. The muscle fibres and their constituent components are not, however, stable in any non-abstract sense. If one were to instead investigate the development of tissue, rather than muscle contraction, none of the objects deem relevant for the first question, (like muscle fibres) remain as stable things. So while it is indisputable that mechanism has been a productive abstraction to explain certain phenomena, it is intrinsically limited in what it can account for within dynamic, living systems that extend across various timescales. Whitehead used the term ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ to refer to the common and persistent assumption that the objects and beings labelled as things are essentially those things, rather than abstractions that have been created to think with. He uses this phrase to highlight how the confusion between our conceptual abstractions, schemas, models, and metaphors, and reality has led to erroneous forms of reasoning. Even entities such as molecules or atoms that appear to

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be irreducible, can be understood as a manifestation of a given temporal stage of a stable processes. Like a muscle, many things appear to be stable because the rate at which they change may be imperceptible to us, such as a mountain or an old cypress tree. Slow rates of stabilisation can make it tempting to categorise these processes as static things. However, if we take the world to be a hierarchy of processes dynamically stabilised at different temporal scales, processes can account for the things that appear as stable entities and the interactions involved in how they change over time. Another important implication of a switch to process metaphysics is that things are no longer considered to be subject to processes, but the other way around (Seibt 2020). If we think about things being contingent on and made up of processes it becomes easier to account for processes that do not have any specific subjects, for example, tornadoes, ocean waves, sounds, digestion, wind, light, flames, electricity and radiation (Nicholson and Dupré 2018). From a substance perspective, things typically exclude other things from their part of time and space, enabling them to be individuated by their spatio-temporal position. Processes, on the other hand have blurry and indeterminate boundaries. A process can be identified or named by the specific end that is produced when a series of activities are causally connected or coordinated, like a thunderstorm. In this way, processes are individualised more by what they do than by their boundaries (Mancilla García et al. 2020). You may be asking at this point why am I telling you all of this. What do these metaphysical concerns have to do with the types of ecologies we are likely to find in urban apartments? The reason is that what we think the world is made of has profound consequences for how we research and construct our habitats and our worlds. As noted above, abstractions, such as processes and substances, determine how reality is conceptualised and open or limit our ability to see particular types of relationships or causal connections. These abstractions also therefore guide our thinking about the types of problems that exist in the world, and the types of solutions we deem possible. If we take a thing with specific properties as the abstraction to think with, the problems and solutions that involve that thing will be determined with reference to these properties; the

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abstractions we employ already contain the types of solutions considered possible. In a world construed in terms of substances, the task of science becomes the discovery of substances that already exist and can be fully meaningful regardless of their context of development and interaction. If using these concepts in the definition of problems and their solutions, there is therefore a risk that important elements of a thing’s history and developmental context are not considered relevant. As demonstrated by the example of H. pylori, attributing properties such as pathogenicity to individual organisms, rather than relational ecologies, can obscure the most relevant conditions and relationships in disease causation. Similarly, as I will discuss in detail in Chapter 4, when one is assessing the toxicity of a chemical, the orthodoxy over the last century has been to presume that there will be a linear dose response. This assumption is based on the concept of toxicity being essential to the substance; more of the substance equals greater toxicity. However, many substances become toxic only when combined with other substances in specific ways, in specific bodies, over specific durations, making it senseless to ascribe toxicity as an inherent property. As Nicholson and Dupré (2018, 3) remind us, getting these concepts right ‘makes a real difference to whether we do science well and understand properly what it tells us’. Another important implication of a shift to processual thinking is that it alters what is considered stable and given, versus what requires explanation. In an interview between cell biologist and sociologist Hannah Landecker and historian of science Flavio D’Abramo, D’Abramo describes a number of recently discovered examples of how organisms change in response to their environments throughout their life course, down to the level of the genome, in ways that are challenging taxonomic classificatory systems (D’Abramo and Landecker 2019). For example, there are butterflies whose colouring and size differed so radically based on the season they were born in that they were initially classified as different species. Landecker responds to this set of discoveries by saying: I think in each of these cases, it is instructive to ask: Why am I surprised by that explanation? …Why is it surprising that seasonality can be so

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integrated into development that it produces a body form that looks like two different species? Why do these cases push up against the structures of expectation that we have?

She continues: These new forms of scientific explanation are like a biological stain— you put it on a cell, and it reveals the structures in the cell. Thinking through epigenetics stains the conceptual apparatus, and all of a sudden, it shows quite sharply how things are categorized, such as expectations about what’s inside and what’s outside an organism.

In any form of research, and particularly in science, the researcher must differentiate between what is assumed background and what needs to be explained; it is this distinction that sets the research objectives and questions. What Landecker reminds us is that the orthodox position within modern science conceptualises the world in terms of stable things with boundaries to delineate the inside and outside. As stability, fixity and boundedness are taken for granted, it is change that requires explanation. However, if we are to flip this, and take process as the background condition, it is less surprising that seasonal conditions can influence the genomic expression of butterflies, or for example, that hormones sensed in the water can determine a fish’s sexual physiology, or that human bodies are changed by the buildings they dwell in. If process and dynamic change are taken to be the norm, the reason that something persists and remains stable over time becomes the phenomena requiring explanation. If the world is composed of dynamic processes at different timescales, what allows some things to become stable and persist through time? This reframing of the way we ask questions of things encourages us to look out and beyond a presumed thing to the other processes with which it interacts through time. This book is concerned with how particular ideas about how bodies interact with their environments have produced specific definitions of healthy modes of dwelling, which have materialised in certain practices, structures and ecologies. The explanatory limitations of a substance ontology and the implications of a shift to a process-ontology have been

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theorised in relation to many phenomena, such as identity formation (Tsoukas 2012), education (Taylor and Bovill 2018), cancer (Bertolaso and Dupré 2018), quantum physics (Griffin 1986), the behaviour of enzymes (Stein 2005) and the dynamics of organisations (Dibben 2004). For the purposes of this book, I will briefly introduce the concept of ecological interdependence, as it is particularly relevant to how we might understand relations between human and non-human occupants, what many call more-than-human relations, in late modern modes of dwelling.

Ecological Interdependence In the broadest sense, ecological interdependence refers to the ways in which groups of organisms have co-evolved to depend on one another for their survival. If one is to take substances as the most fundamental unit of analysis, interaction within an ecosystem would be conceptualised as something that happens between things, rather than something that makes and maintains them. A thing would be taken to be what it is, independent of the interaction it has with other things; entities exist before they interact. A thing must exhibit a degree of autonomy and independence from anything external to it. This position makes it very difficult to conceive of anything as being ecological, as the outcomes of interactions between things must be explained in terms of what existed beforehand (Mancilla García et al. 2020). This limits our ability to understand not only how organisms and their environments change in response to one another over time, but the production of ‘emergent properties’: occurrences within systems that cannot be entirely explained by their individual elements (Mayr 1982). Nutrient-rich soil, and clean air and water are all emergent properties of ecosystems. From a substance perspective, one must be able to define the boundaries between the different individuals that are interacting in a system. However, ecological communities, like microbial biofilms, animals and their microbiomes (what Margulis termed Holobionts [1991]), and superorganisms such as ant or bee colonies, are not simply gatherings of discreet, agentic things, but highly co-dependant processes (Moritz and

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Southwick 2012). The degree of entanglement exhibited within these communities often makes it hard to establish and justify the boundaries of a biological individual or say how many individuals there are. The boundaries used to designate a superorganism are not strictly drawn around physical entities, but the system that does the integral activities. The ubiquity of symbiosis in nature significantly confuses the task of defining the boundaries of a biological organism in a way that is useful for understanding it. Even organisms with more seemingly fixed boundaries, such as humans, rely on and are continuously shaped by the complex network of reciprocal interactions that we maintain with other organisms and processes within an ecology. Humans could not live without the thousands of microbes that dwell on our every nook and surface. The commitment of substance ontologies to stable entities with hard boundaries, critically limits their ability to explain change within interdependent ecologies and the conditions that produce them. If one is to consider ecological interdependence from a processual perspective, concepts such as species, as they are currently understood, become troubled. The ontological status of species has been one of the most enduring debates in the philosophy of biology. For a long time, species were thought to denote essential kinds, in the Aristotelian sense; it was assumed that they have some kind of essential property that belongs to and identifies them (Hacking 2007). In developing the taxonomic system we use to categorise animals today, Linnaeus wrote in 1951: ‘Revelation, observation and thought confirm that all genera and species are natural. All genera are natural, and have been such since the beginning of time’ (Linnaeus 1751, 100). Since the 1970s, the view that species are individuals rather than kinds has become widely accepted. However, a substance ontology and the latent ghost of essentialism still persist in the common classificatory processes for life. For example, the persistence of the assumption that things have determinate boundaries and are consistently identifiable as discreet things still shapes how scientists define and classify what things are. The emergence, transformation and decay of supposedly unchanging things, and our inability to accurately say when one thing truly becomes another, poses significant problems for a substance ontology when

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applied to the categorisation of life. If we are to take a processual perspective, on the other hand, species can be understood as processes that are maintained over time through reproduction, involving both inheritance and developmental processes, which draw on a diverse range of causal factors that contribute to lineage stability (Oyama et al. 2003). Individuals and groups construct and modify their environments to various degrees, which also allows certain traits to persist. The stability of a species for periods of time can be accounted for by natural selection, which then leads to the inheritance of the most adaptive phenotypes in a lineage. When species do change, a processual approach would conceptualise it in terms of multiple processes providing the preconditions for selection (Pigliucci and Müller 2010). While the concept of ecological interdependence is most commonly associated with the macro-scale of life, it also applies at the molecular scale. The idea that has dominated conceptualisation of molecular change for the duration of modern chemistry is based on a substance ontology in which molecules are depicted as machines and molecular change is understood as the rearrangement of its constituent parts (Stein 2004). According to the Chemist Ross Stein, chemical compounds are normally defined at the molecular scale by their structure: the configuration of their atoms in 3-dimensional space. Viewed in this way, molecules become deterministic machines with a fixed arrangement of parts. It is an accepted truth in chemistry that molecular structure produces molecular properties. However, Stein argues that because structure only ever emerges in an environmental context, viewing it as an inherent property is misguided. Molecular structure emerges under the influence of environmental pressures that provide constraints. These constraints then produce a distinguishable spatial atomic distribution. Accordingly, Stein (2004, 12) proposes that: Similar to a macro-ecosystem, the molecule endures through time and maintains identity, not because it is static and unchanging, but rather because it is a dynamic system exhibiting a stability pattern through time. … Transformations of the molecule-as-ecosystem should not be viewed as rearrangements of parts, but rather as ensemble progression from one dynamic state to another.

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Similarly, the philosopher John Cobb argues that: Atoms acquire different properties when they are arranged in different molecular structures because these different structures constitute different environments. Instead of viewing molecules as machines, we should view them as ecosystems. Science may continue to ask what properties a certain type of atom continues to have in great varieties of contexts, but it should add the question as to the diverse properties the atom acquires in different relationships. (Cobb 1988, 108)

In this book I propose that understanding ecological interdependence across spatio-temporal scales is key to understanding how more-thanhuman indoor environments are created, the health consequences for their occupants and the other cultural, biological and material processes that are changed by them. In the chapters that follow, I endeavour to re-present the subject—homo indoorus—to show how we as more-thanhumans are transformed by particular modes of dwelling and the forms of ecological governance that guide it. In doing this, I hope to make more explicit what is at stake in not acting so that, as Latour and Weibel (2020) suggest, we can no longer maintain the delusion that nature sits beside us. If we do fundamentally reconsider the processes that connect us to global ecologies via our everyday lives, it is not only those who are already disempowered and marginalised who will be transformed, but all of us dwelling on this planet.

Notes 1. The words ‘environment’ and ‘ecology’ are commonly deployed to designate specific and bounded domains—often external, distant and detached from the user of the term. When the term ‘ecosystem’, or even just ‘system’, is used as a noun, something that is not the system is created. Ison and Straw highlight that the etymology of the word environment actually originated as the Old French verb ‘environner’, meaning to enclose, surround or encircle (Ison and Straw 2020) Re-elevating this more active definition, and untethering it from purely scientific objects, my use of terms such as

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

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environment and ecology are intended to be more systemic and encompassing than what these English nouns, and their natural/cultural dualisms, imply. Rather than employing hybrid terms such as ‘socio-ecological’, I presume the recombination of these falsely bifurcated domains in my use of the terms ecological and environmental. While there are multiple definitions of what constitutes a Biome, they are generally considered to be distinct biological communities that have formed in response to a shared physical climate (National Geographic 2019). Some of these include Dunn Lab at North Carolina State University, Night Lab at University of California San Diego and Green Lab at University of Oregon. Toxicants are not to be confused with toxins. The former refers to industrially produced chemicals while the latter refers to poisons produced by animals. The mechanism of endocrine disruption is explained in Chapter 4, but for a more nuanced discussion of the mechanism and the role of the social worlds and other relations in endocrine processes, see Hannah Landecker’s The Social as Signal in the Body of Chromatin. Throughout this book I use both the terms ‘late modern’ and ‘late industrial’. While I use both to characterise the period since the early to mid-twentieth century, the emphasis differs slightly. Late modern highlights the continuation of a modernist paradigm and its antecedent cultural, economic and institutional configurations, while I use late industrial to refer more to the material, ecological conditions that characterise this period. Texts such as Inescapable Ecologies by Linda Nash (2006) and Seeing like a State by James C. Scott (1998) provide excellent insights into large-scale ecological modifications and the modernist imperative. Kharas and others define middle class as households with per capita incomes between $10 and $100 per person per day in 2005 purchasing power parity terms. For overviews of this extensive scholarship, see Liboiron, Tironi, and Calvillo’s ‘Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world’ (Liboiron et al. 2018) Roberts & Langston, eds. ‘Toxic Bodies/Toxic Environments: An Interdisciplinary Forum’, (Roberts et al. 2008), Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, and Christopher C. Sellers, eds., ‘Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments’, (Mitman et al. 2004) and Boudia & Jas’ Powerless Science? (Boudia and Jas 2014).

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10. It is important to note that not subscribers to a substance ontology believe in fundamental essences. John Stuart Mill is a notable example (Hacking 2007). 11. When quantum mechanics emerged at the turn of the twentieth century atoms became untethered from particles as objects and were reconceptualised as stable waves. This resulted in the decline of the heavily substantialist ontology of Newtonian physics. Quantum field theory in particular—which looks at the dynamic organisation of energy distributed across space-time—is particularly oriented to a processual way of thinking. The Quantum field is considered to be primary, while particles (not solid objects but excitations of specific fields) are secondary. From the perspective of modern Quantum physics, dynamic fields extended in space time are the basic ontological components of the universe, rather than tiny things (Nicholson and Dupré 2018). 12. While I focus in this book on the trajectories of Western philosophy that I deem most influential in the construction of modern techno-capsules, it is important to note that process philosophy is not unique to, nor even most characteristic of Western thought. Others have argued processual thinking in Buddhist, Indigenous and Chinese traditions developed in parallel or even preceded Western process philosophy. The notion of ‘becoming’, and the endless process of coming to be and passing away are central to Buddhism (King 1999, 116–117). The parallels between process philosophy and the cosmologies of many First Nations communities have also been highlighted, particularly with respect to understandings of reality as inherently relational (2004) and (Suchet-Pearson et al. 2013) strong parallels have also been drawn between processual philosophy and Confucian thought. (Helin et al. 2014).

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Bastien, Betty, and Jürgen W. Kremer. 2004. Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Benjamin, Walter. 2002 (1939). The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bertolaso, Marta, and John Dupré. 2018. “A Processual Perspective on Cancer.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, 321. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas. 2014. Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World . Vol. 2. Berghahn Books. Brock, Thomas D, and Hudson Freeze. 1969. “Thermus Aquaticus gen. n. and sp. n., a Nonsporulating Extreme Thermophile.” Journal of Bacteriology 98 (1): 289–297. Bronson, Matthew C. 2017. “Lessons in the Old Language.” Global Oneness Project. Casadevall, Arturo, and Liise-anne Pirofski. 2015. “What Is a Host? Incorporating the Microbiota into the Damage-Response Framework.” Infection and Immunity 83 (1): 2–7. Cobb, John B. 1988. “Ecology, Science, and Religion: Toward a Postmodern Worldview.” In The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals, 99–113. Cooke, Benjamin, Simon West, and Wiebren J. Boonstra. 2016. “Dwelling in the Biosphere: Exploring an Embodied Human–Environment Connection in Resilience Thinking.” Sustainability Science 11 (5): 831–843. D’Abramo, Flavio, and Hannah Landecker. 2019. “Anthropocene in the Cell.” Technosphere Magazine, March 20, 1–7. Daunton, Martin J. 1983. “Public Place and Private Space: The Victorian City and the Working-Class Household.” In The Pursuit of Urban History, 212– 233. Descartes, René, and Thomas Steele Hall. 1972 (1633). Treatise on Man. Vol. 36. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Diamanti-Kandarakis, Evanthia, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Linda C Giudice, Russ Hauser, Gail S. Prins, Ana M. Soto, R Thomas Zoeller, and Andrea C. Gore. 2009. “Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement.” Endocrine Reviews 30 (4): 293–342. Dibben, Mark R. 2004. “Exploring the Processual Nature of Trust and Cooperation in Organisations: A Whiteheadian Analysis.” Philosophy of Management 4 (1): 25–39. Dunn, Rob. 2018. Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno. 2012. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno, and Peter Weibel. 2020. Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Liboiron, Max. 2015. “Redefining Pollution and Action: The Matter of Plastics.” Journal of Material Culture 21 (1): 87–110. Liboiron, Max, Manuel Tironi, and Nerea Calvillo. 2018. “Toxic Politics: Acting in a Permanently Polluted World.” Social Studies of Science 48 (3): 331–349. Linnaeus, Carl. 1751. Philosophia Botanica. Stockholm: G. Kiesewetter. Lowe, Victor. 2020. Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work: 1910– 1947 . Baltimore: JHU Press. Lowry, Christopher A., David G. Smith, Philip H. Siebler, Dominic Schmidt, Christopher E. Stamper, James E. Hassell, Paula S. Yamashita, James H. Fox, Stefan O. Reber, and Lisa A. Brenner. 2016. “The Microbiota, Immunoregulation, and Mental Health: Implications for Public Health.” Current Environmental Health Reports 3 (3): 270–286. MacKendrick, Norah. 2018. Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics. Oakland: University of California Press. Mancilla García, María, Tilman Hertz, Maja Schlüter, Rika Preiser, and Minka Woermann. 2020. “Adopting Process-Relational Perspectives to Tackle the Challenges of Social-Ecological Systems Research.” Ecology and Society 25 (1). Manuel Igea, Juan. 2015. “From the Old Immunitas to the Modern Immunity: Do We Need a New Name for the Immune System?” Current Immunology Reviews 11 (1): 55–65. Margulis, Lynn. 1991. “Symbiogenesis and Symbionticism.” Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis, 10. Martínez, Inés, James C. Stegen, Maria X. Maldonado-Gómez, A. Murat Eren, Peter M. Siba, Andrew R. Greenhill, and Jens Walter. 2015. “The Gut Microbiota of Rural Papua New Guineans: Composition, Diversity Patterns, and Ecological Processes.” Cell Reports 11 (4): 527–538. Mayr, Ernst. 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. McMichael, A. J. 2001. “Human Culture, Ecological Change, and Infectious Disease: Are We Experiencing History’s Fourth Great Transition?” Ecosystem Health 7 (2): 107–115.

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McNeill, Donald. 2009. The Global Architect: Firms, Fame and Urban Form. Abingdon: Routledge. Méthot, Pierre-Olivier, and Samuel Alizon. 2015. “Emerging Disease and the Evolution of Virulence: The Case of the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic.” In Classification, Disease and Evidence, edited by G. Lambert, P. Huneman, and M. Silberstein, 93–130. Dordrecht: Springer. Mitman, Gregg, Michelle Murphy, and Christopher Sellers. 2004. “Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments.” Osiris (Philadelphia, PA) 19. Miwa, Hiroto, Mae F. Go, and Nobuhiro Sato. 2002. “H. Pylori and Gastric Cancer: The Asian Enigma.” The American Journal of Gastroenterology 97 (5): 1106–1112. Moritz, Robin, and Edward E. Southwick. 2012. Bees as Superorganisms: An Evolutionary Reality. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. Murphy, Michelle. 2006. Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Nash, Linda. 2008. “Purity and Danger: Historical Reflections on the Regulation of Environmental Pollutants.” Environmental History 13 (4): 651–658. National Geographic. 2019. What Makes a Biome? https://www.nationalgeog raphic.org/article/what-makes-biome/. Nicholson, Daniel J., and John Dupré. 2018. Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Otter, Chris. 2017. “Encapsulation: Inner Worlds and Their Discontents.” Journal of Literature and Science 10 (2): 55–66. Otter, Chris, Nicholas Breyfogle, John L. Brooke, Mari K. Webel, Matthew Klingle, Chris Otter, Andrew Price-Smith, Brett L. Walker, and Linda Nash. 2015. “Technology, Ecology, and Human Health Since 1850.” Environmental History 20 (4): 710. Oyama, Susan, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray. 2003. Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Pallesen, Eva. 2017. “Documenting the Invisible–on the ‘How’of Process Research: (Re)considering Method from Process Philosophy.” Methodological Innovations 10 (3): 2059799117745781. Pigliucci, Massimo, and Gerd B. Müller. 2010. “Elements of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.” In Evolution: The Extended Synthesis, 3–17. Podmore, Julie. 1998. “(Re)reading the ‘Loft Living’ Habitus in Montreal’s Inner City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 22 (2): 283–302.

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Roberts, Jody A, Nancy Langston, Michael Egan, Scott Frickel, Linda Nash, Barbara Allen, Sarah A. Vogel, Davis Frederick Rowe, Arthur Daemmrich, and Michelle Murphy. 2008. “Toxic Bodies/Toxic Environments: An Interdisciplinary Forum.” Environmental History 13 (4): 629–703. Rook, Graham A. W., and L. Rosa Brunet. 2005. “Old Friends for Breakfast.” Clin Exp Allergy 35 (7): 841–842. Ruiz-Calderon, Jean F., Humberto Cavallin, Se Jin Song, Atila Novoselac, Luis R. Pericchi, Jean N. Hernandez, Rafael Rios, Oralee H. Branch, Henrique Pereira, and Luciana C. Paulino. 2016. “Walls Talk: Microbial Biogeography of Homes Spanning Urbanization.” Science Advances 2 (2): e1501061. Saha, Dhira Rani, Simanti Datta, Santanu Chattopadhyay, Rajashree Patra, Ronita De, Krishnan Rajendran, Abhijit Chowdhury, Thandavaryan Ramamurthy, and Asish Kumar Mukhopadhyay. 2009. “Indistinguishable Cellular Changes in Gastric Mucosa between Helicobacter Pylori Infected Asymptomatic Tribal and Duodenal Ulcer Patients.” World Journal of Gastroenterology: WJG 15 (9): 1105. Savage, Amy M., Justin Hills, Katherine Driscoll, Daniel J. Fergus, Amy M. Grunden, and Robert R. Dunn. 2016. “Microbial Diversity of Extreme Habitats in Human Homes.” Peer J 4: e2376. Seibt, Johanna. 2020. Process Philosophy. In Stanford Encyclopeadia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2020 Edition. Shaw, Wendy S. 2000. “Ways of Whiteness: Harlemising Sydney’s Aboriginal Redfern.” Australian Geographical Studies 38 (3): 291–305. Shaw, Wendy S. 2006. “Sydney’s SoHo Syndrome? Loft Living in the Urbane City.” Cultural Geographies 13 (2): 182–206. Sitaraman, Ramakrishnan. 2015. “Allergies, Helicobacter Pylori and the Continental Enigmas.” Frontiers in Microbiology 6: 578. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2016. Spheres. Vol. 3: Foams: Plural Spherology. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Stark, Hannah. 2017. “Deleuze, Subjectivity and Nonhuman Becomings in the Anthropocene.” Dialogues in Human Geography 7 (2): 151–155. Stein, Ross L. 2004. “Towards a Process Philosophy of Chemistry.” Hyle: International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 10 (4): 5–22. Stein, Ross L. 2005. “Enzymes as Ecosystems: A Panexperientialist Account of Biocatalytic Chemical Transformation.” Process Studies 34 (1): 62–80. Studtmann, Paul. 2021. “Aristotle’s Categories.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2021 Edition. Styres, Sandra. 2018. “Literacies of Land: Decolonizing Narratives, Storying, and Literature.” In Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education, 24–37. Abingdon: Routledge.

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2 Pathogens as Substances: Hygiene, Germs and Domestic Design

Throughout the history of scientific inquiry the indoors has often been disregarded as quite boring or, at most, a place that is invaded by pathogens that must be monitored and destroyed. It was not until the 1970s that the diversity of life indoors, beyond pathogens, came to be studied in any serious fashion by marginal groups of microbiologists (Dunn p.16).1 Ignorance of the abundance and diversity of microbial life around us was not just a result of disinterest, but the way that life, bodies, disease, the environment and the relationships between them had been conceptualised. While versions of microbes had been studied and even utilised for years, their debut in mass society as the entities commonly recognised today came in the form of ‘germ theory’, a grand theorisation which framed microbial life as harmful invaders that disturb the natural and proper functioning of human bodies. The figure of the pathogen as a metonym for all invisible life was reinforced by the scientific techniques available to nineteenth century microbiologists. Germ theory, and modern microbiology, emerged from a world that had existing systems for categorising life based on a notion of biological species as fixed and essential entities. Within this ontology, co-dependency between macro and microorganisms would have been all but ridiculous. These early © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Wakefield-Rann, Life Indoors, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2_2

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Western scientific ideas of what microbes are, where they live and how they interact with us, have shaped not only the science of how they are investigated, but the development of urban planning, design, public health and various consumer product industries that trade on the value of microbial extermination. In this chapter I will examine some pertinent points in the history of disease and immunity concepts that help make sense of how normative, urban techno-capsule habitats have evolved to produce the pathogen ecologies we are encountering today. While the history of immunity thinking clearly extends to the origins of human society, I stick to the period specified as McMichael’s (2001) fourth wave of the ecological history of human disease and begin with an examination of the transition in the nineteenth century away from a ‘physiological’ theory of disease, which saw sickness as emerging from internal corporeal imbalance, to an ‘ontological’ conception of disease, in which discreet, specified entities become the primary culprits of infection. This transition can be conceived of as an enduring shift in Western medicine away from understanding disease in terms of internal balance and equilibrium modulated by environmental factors, to a substance-oriented localisation of disease in specific things, from which the modern notion of ‘the pathogen’ was eventually concretised. In particular, I will explore how the conceptualisation of diseases as agential substances has helped to shape modern indoor dwelling spaces. The fear of contagions, especially in the form of ‘germs’, was central not only to the design of the first modern, urban water-based sanitation systems across Northern Europe and America, but the ways that homes connected to these infrastructures have since become partitioned and managed (Melosi 2008). Definitions of hygiene bound to the extermination of germs also became significant moral and aesthetic imperatives in the early twentieth century, further materialising the belief that human integration with microscopic life could and should be minimised and controlled. This framing of microorganisms as ‘other’ and ‘out of place’ (Douglas 1966) directly emerged from the history of biological thought based on essentialised notion of individual, functionally independent organisms within distinct species (Kirksey 2015). These substantialist

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convictions are particularly evident in the modernist design movement, and its quest for purity, encapsulation and control.

Making Disease a Thing: From Physiological to Ontological Theories of Disease Historical theorisations of disease within the broadly Western tradition are often, somewhat crudely, categorised according to physiological and ontological theories (DeLacy 2016; Rütten and King 2013). These different conceptualisations of disease have not only shaped modern Western medicine, but the ways that societies have structured their built environments and modes of governance to protect populations from illness. On the one hand, physiological theories broadly considered pathology to be tied to a particular person and the way their internal balance, based on their own unique disposition, was affected by a place or event. Treatment was therefore oriented to rebalancing the individual body rather than expelling a specific invader from an otherwise pure and harmonious system. This physiological understanding of disease was, in many ways, more akin to a processual way of understanding body–environment relations, as it construes diseases in terms of temporally extended disturbances to the carefully regulated entanglement of interconnected processes that make up the body (Nicholson and Dupré 2018). Conversely, ontological theories of disease, which have dominated Western thought since the nineteenth century, maintain that diseases are caused by specific, agential, foreign intruders that enter the body. This framing of disease is thoroughly aligned with substance ontology, as it regards causes of diseases as particular things (or properties of things) that are discrete and exist independently of the infected body. In this section I will briefly characterise some of the key developments in the transition from a physiological to an ontological conception of disease, culminating in the ascension of germ theory in the late nineteenth century. These developments are important for understanding how a particular kind of ontologised substance came to shape urban and domestic immunity structures in the twentieth century.

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Physiological Medicine Interest in the relationship between urban and indoor spaces and disease in the early modern period were shaped by a range of theories that thought of disease according to a diverse array of bodily and environmental disturbances. While certain theories held more sway in different places and periods, early modern understandings can be broadly considered as more ‘physiological’, based on ideas from Galenic medicine and Hippocratic (460–377 BC) natural philosophy (DeLacy 2016). A physiological conceptualisation of disease holds that problems arise due to disturbances within bodily systems triggered by ‘imbalances’ in one’s environment or lifestyle. A particularly influential version of this idea through the European medieval period to the nineteenth century was based on the imbalance of fluid ‘humours’ within the body. According to this humoral theory, the four humours: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm, must be kept in a state of equilibrium to avoid disease. For example, the disease of ‘melancholia’ was thought to be caused by the build-up of too much wet, cold, heavy black bile. Epidemic diseases that affect a whole population were attributed to environmental factors that polluted the atmosphere or water, causing harmful changes in humoral balance across the population. In addition to environmental factors, moral corruption was also considered to influence the balance of the humours (Frelick 2005). In the case of leprosy, it was thought that overindulgence in carnal pleasures produced a build-up of black bile which manifested in the body as flesh to rot. Its framing as a moral disorder was reflected in the treatment of ‘lepers’ as deviants. Some catholic communities even developed ceremonies in which those infected were declared legally dead and no longer able to participate in communal Christian life (Barnett 2014). Following this understanding of disease, individuals were able to have the same illness, yet the manifestation of the disease via symptoms were considered to be mediated by internal temperament. Based on this logic, diseases that occurred in different locations or times were not considered to be related, even if similar symptoms manifested in individuals. Interwoven with these physiological theories of disease were various instantiations of miasmatic theories, which focused on ‘foul’ or ‘bad’

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air as the primary disturbance that caused disease. The meta-theory of miasmas can, like humours, be traced back to the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition which linked pestilential air to particular places (Curtis 2007). Originally meaning ‘stain’ or pollution of sin which offended the gods in ancient Greece, miasma came to be used to describe foul airs and atmospheres that were thought to cause disease (Parker 1996). Hippocrates professed that health required one to steer clear of the airs, waters and places that contained dangerous vapours or miasmas (Curtis 2007). The predominance of physiological conceptions of disease across Europe did not preclude notions of contagion based on the transmission of substances. Contagionism (meaning ‘touching together’) predates an ontological conception of disease, in which the specific causes and mechanisms of disease transmission began to be theorised in a more unified way (DeLacy 2016). Prior to the late nineteenth century, contagionism referred to a vague, disparate and speculative set of ideas about the way diseases are transmitted (Rütten and King 2013). Yet, it was with the emergence of this notion that we begin to see a depiction of diseases as discreet types of entities that could be transmitted. For example, in 1588 Thomas Harriot attributed the high death rates of Algonquian Indians to bodyless and invisible entities in the air ‘shooting invisible bullets into them’ (Greenblatt 1988, 36). Similarly, in 1546 Italian physician Fracastoro influentially proposed that contagions were a kind of supernatural substance (seminaria) that transmitted disease by direct contact, indirect contact through intermediaries, and at a distance through magic (Pantin 2005). While discreet particles of contagion were clearly beginning to be identified, their transmission was still thought to be influenced by all manner of factors, including the position of the stars or an individual’s spiritual disposition. The idea of contagionism came into more common use at the time of the Black Death, where transmission was thought to occur between people from touch, breath and even sight (Cohn 2008). Several other diseases began to be described as contagious around the sixteenth century, including smallpox, syphilis and typhoid. The concept was extended to include not only physical ailments, but the transmission of emotional conditions such as religious fervour (Rütten and King 2013). David Hume refers to spiritual epidemics in The History of

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England (1759) and Rütten and King (2013, 3) refer to Shaftsbury’s 1732 accounts of the transmission of disease via fervour and breath: …when innumerable Eyes glow with the Passion, and heaving Breasts are labouring with Inspiration; when not the aspect only, but the very Breath and Exhalations of Men are infectious, and the inspiring Disease imparts itself by insensible Transpiration.

These indistinct conceptualisations of contagions remained awkwardly enmeshed with physiological conceptions of disease throughout the eighteenth, and in some places, into the early nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, immediately prior to the introduction of germ theory, there was a shift away from seeing the source of disease as foul air, to the chemical particles generated within the rotting matter itself. This theory, known as the ‘zymotic’ theory, was linked to the experiments of agricultural chemist Justus von Liebig on the decomposition of vegetable matter (Tomes 1999). Indeed, it is thought it was von Liebig’s experimentation on fermentation that encouraged Louis Pasteur, also a chemist, to begin investigating fermentation as a potential source of disease. While zymotic theory only had a brief ascendancy, it can be seen as a direct predecessor to Pasteur’s laboratory experiments which revealed that living microorganisms, rather than chemical ferments, were crucial agents in the spread of disease.

Ontological Disease The seeds, if you will, of more ontological conceptions of disease can be found in these preceding notions of disease particles and contagion. An ontological understanding of disease opposes physiological notions by conceptualising the agents of illness as entities of some form in their own right (DeLacy 2016). A disease is a substance or a thing, not an individual imbalance or disturbance in physiological functioning. However, the types of things that diseases were thought to be was still highly unsettled until germ theory gained mass support in the early twentieth century. Prior to this, different variants of ontologism coexisted. For example, the nosologists of the eighteenth century, and in particular

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the physician Thomas Sydneham, framed diseases as entities identifiable via the typical clusters of signs and symptoms displayed by individuals (Nordenfelt 1995). This led him to classify diseases as kinds of species of abstract objects that are essential, eternal, unchangeable and preformed. These ideas were superseded by a new ontologised notion of disease that emerged with laboratory experiments in the late nineteenth century, which linked disease to specific forms of microbial life or ‘germs’. The word ‘germ’ (meaning ‘to sprout’) had been used prior to the emergence of germ theory to refer to various invisible particulate sources of contagion. It was not until the 1880s that the term became specifically linked to a theory specifying living microorganisms with fixed lineages, like other animals, as the agents of disease (DeLacy 2016). It was the isolation of microbes in the laboratory in the 1870s in collaborations initiated by Pasteur and German physician Robert Koch, in addition to John Tyndall and Joseph Lister, that cemented the idea that pathogenic microorganisms cause disease, and that they are discreet, essential agents. From this time, the discipline of bacteriology gained increasing momentum as specific microbes were deemed to be responsible for diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, typhoid and scarlet fever. It was in this period that the vague and speculative conceptualisations of contagions that had previously existed were reformulated and solidified as specific agents tied to specific diseases that could be isolated in laboratories (Rütten and King 2013). Disease causing entities became ontologised and essentialised as readily identifiable and tracible substances that could be eliminated. By 1900 it was widely accepted across places such as United States, Europe and Australia that disease could be transmitted between people and via objects and that microbial germs were to blame; firmly rooting orthodox understandings of infectious disease in substances and linear causation mechanisms.2 While many early adherents to germ theory believed that disease particles required specific environmental or atmospheric conditions to ‘germinate’, the progression and legitimation of the theory in the lab heralded a more emphatic move away from the consideration of ecological and physiological processes (Tomes 1999). Diseases were no longer identified with the signs and symptoms manifest in bodies, but identifiable, specified and consistent material causes. This period cemented the belief that

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if these individual offending entities could be removed that the ‘purity’ of spaces and bodies could be maintained. It was also at this time that the concept of the immune system as the first line of defence in an ongoing battle against disease emerges. As Ed Cohen (2009) describes it, the idea of immunity offers a very particular strategy for accommodating the frictions, tensions and contradictions between the single and the multiple that maps on to concepts of liberal democratic governance. Indeed, the word immunity had a long career as a legal concept dating back to ancient Rome, prior to its migration into biomedicine in the late nineteenth century. It was around this time that the notion of immunity became fused with that of defence, and defence came to be considered, potentially for the first time, as a capacity of the living body. This reconceptualisation heralded an enduring shift from healing as a process of rebalancing the body to align with nature, to one in which pure bodies defend themselves in an ongoing battle against invading agents of disease. As germ theory entered public consciousness, the types of things that germs are, and their motivations, became an increasing focus of speculation and consternation. It became common to understand them as morally agential beings, bent of destruction and without regard for other life (Tomes 1997). Microbes were often described as invading armies whose objective is to attack, overcome and conquer their human hosts. Joseph Richardson described them as wild beings that ‘… are to be escaped, just as we would escape hordes of animal(s), or swarms of insect pests, by shutting them out or killing them before they can fast on our bodies’ (Tomes 1997, 43). Like the Noble Lion, it was common to consider specific species in morally loaded terms; their essences were fundamental to their biology and moral kind. It is here that we also see the emergence of the enduring idea of pathogenicity as an essential property of specific microbes; one of the most influential ideas not only in medicine and epidemiology, but in the design of cities, homes and everyday immunity practices (Méthot and Alizon 2015). This shift in the location of disease initiated new modes of environmental relationality. The notion that environments seep into porous bodies, and that one’s body must be in balance with its environment receded, albeit erratically, in dominant biomedical and

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architectural discourse in Europe. The relevance of the environment to disease diminished in the industrialised West as bacteriology came to eventually bound and locate disease within specific organisms. In the section that follows I will explore some of the ways that essentialised conceptualisations of disease, and pathogens in particular, have been materialised and embodied to shape the current trajectory of indoor ecologies. I focus in particular on the way that indoor environments have been conceptualised and erected as structures that confer a version of immunity oriented by a substance ontology.

The Embodied and Material Legacies of Germs Versions of the germ that were imagined and mobilised in the nineteenth century became embedded in the material fabric of cities, buildings and practices throughout the world under Western cultural and political influence. Again, this is not to suggest that there has ever been a totalising ontology of the germ shared by all, but that certain version carried more currency within the movements that began to shape cities. The designation of microbes as ‘out of place’ in cities, homes and bodies established an antimicrobial mentality that still persists in many urban forms and practices. While there has evidently been a greater nuancing of understanding of microbial life, and its role in enabling human life to flourish, antimicrobial beliefs and practices endure in the many pre-cognitive and habitual modes of building, speaking, partitioning and relating to the world that makeup everyday lifeworlds. Many of the normative built forms and embodied hygiene habits that dominate in the industrialised West, and increasingly elsewhere, can be traced back to the infrastructures, ideas and practices that became mainstream in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The practical definition of hygiene that was moulded through germ theory in this period, became an important aesthetic, moral and public health imperative in the design of cities and buildings. It gave pathogenic things agency, and made them perceptible as objects, while making the ecological processes that cause pathogens to emerge and thrive largely invisible.

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Urban and Sanitary Design The shift to an ontological theory of disease was enabled in many ways by shifts occurring in the built environment across Europe. As noted previously, the zymotic theory of disease had a brief period of ascendancy in the mid-nineteenth century prior to germ theory taking hold. It was during this time that the programme known variously as the sanitary, hygienist or purity movement was established (Forty 1995). The need to ‘clean up’ the populous, and particularly the poorer classes, arose due to increasing urbanisation associated with the Industrial Revolution. The rural to urban migration that resulted from the transformation in labour radically altered the living conditions in cities. As Rose George (2011) notes, this discrepancy had a dramatic effect on life expectancy, as of 1851 a male born in rural Devon may live to 57 years, while in urban Liverpool he may only expect to reach 26. In addition to more people living more closely together, there was a resistance in many migratory populations to contemporaneous ideas about disease transmission and cleanliness. Based on the humoral theory of disease, which still persisted in the practices of many populations, heat and water were thought to infiltrate the body through the pores of the skin, or worse, vital substances might seep out, and cause the humours to fall out of balance. As a result, many people still avoided washing their bodies due to hygiene concerns. The rural populations of Europe also lived in close proximity to the earth, and often believed ‘natural’ dirt played an important role in protecting the skin from infiltration by miasmas that bathing would remove (Drake 1997). As I will discuss in Chapter 3, these ideas hint at the important immunological roles of microbial communities in dirt and the skin microbiome that are now known, although understandings of the mechanisms at play were vastly different. However, as rural populations moved to crowded urban areas their attitudes to dirt and health were not fit for their new ecologies. In addition to lacking the natural ecological cycling that accompanies farm life, many of them brought livestock, poultry and working animals to accompany them in their new lives (Drake 1997). As a result, animal and human waste and carcasses

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accumulated in the streets. In ecological terms, there was no ‘carrying capacity’ for this type of waste within these new urban ecosystems. As the urban poor crowded in on the upper classes, the ability of the upper classes to distinguish themselves via distance was reduced and visual indicators of class became more important. Cleanliness, in particular, became a visual indicator of status, while the dirty bodies of the poor linked them to the filth in the streets (Wigley 2001). The meaning of skin as the boundary of the body underwent a transformation throughout this period, as it was increasingly apparent that the diseases associated with the morally impure manifested in disfigurement of the skin. For the middle and upper classes of the new industrial cities, the skin became a maker of class and morality, even if they could not in reality avoid the urban maladies (Goubert 1989). Fashions for long skirts and high collars persisted under the guise of modesty, but also played a crucial role in preventing any dermal or spiritual imperfections being exposed. Purity reforms were therefore as much about moral cleanliness as physical; the hygienists were marking character and ridding the city of filth, disease and immorality. Urban densification and the new sanitation imperative also started to influence the design of cities and buildings. Urban centres across Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa experienced recurrent epidemics of cholera, smallpox, scarlet fever, the plague and regular localised outbreaks of pneumonia and typhoid throughout the nineteenth century (Byrne 2008). As a consequence, ventilation and the circulation of air became increasingly important practices to bring fresh air into rooms and flush out stagnant conditions. To enable this, windows became larger, ceilings higher and some houses were even designed with systems of pipes and vents to create sufficient air flow (Campkin and Cox 2012). The association of foul air with particular kinds of matter, such as rotting food or faeces, meant that ‘dirty’ activities, spaces and things began to be separated from ‘clean’ ones. The sensory cues for dirtiness also began to shift and amplify at this time. The architectural researcher Scott Drake (1997) argues that the purity movement changed the role of the senses in the evaluation of space, and attitudes towards the body in space. One of the most important projects for the sanitarians was the deodorisation of bodies and

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urban places (Corbin 1986). As foul odour was thought to be the cause of disease, capable of penetrating the skin and lungs, smell played a central role in the avoidance of disease. In particular, foul odours were associated with the vices and living conditions of the poorer classes. While the movement and dispersal of bad air were important immunity practices, close living proximity in the cities and the inability to move on all bad air, meant perfumes increasingly became a measure to ward off disease. Cities were thus filled with the intermingling of fetid body and street odours and the perfumes concocted to cover them up (Corbin 1986). As hygiene practices began to improve towards the end of the nineteenth century, the use of perfumes to mask odours started to be perceived as suspicious, and as indicators of an underlying rot (Corbin 1986). The absence of odour became the only true mark of cleanliness. On the urban scale, the requirement for deodorisation translated into a need for spatial design that allowed for the circulation of matter and air. As a result, streets opened out to allow clean air to flow and waste began to be routinely removed from streets. Water also began to play a vital role in the expulsions of foul matter and odours, and the separation of the clean from the dirty. In the mid to late nineteenth century the conquest of water became a key focus in the modernising and civilizing of urban centres. Jean-Pierre Goubert (1989) discussed this as a time when water transitioned from being a gift from nature to an industrial product to be managed and controlled. The role of water in sanitising the city, and the technologies that emerged from these beliefs still persist in urban infrastructures around the world, and significantly shape our indoor ecologies by bringing water that have been subject to particular chemical treatment practices and microbes into living environments via taps. The control of water flows in Europe began as a means to cleanse the air, primarily through water fountains in public spaces (Drake 1997). Even prior to the construction of fountains, urban streets in cities such as Paris were washed with dissolved Lime, one of the first chemical disinfectants, to remove the odour of rotting bodies (El-Khoury 1996). By the mid-nineteenth century, cesspits were being replaced with sewer systems, in order to displace ‘bad’ disease-causing air away from urban

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populations (Corbin 1986). Miasmic conceptions of contagion were the primary design imperatives for early covered or underground pipes that transport odour-causing matter—human waste, rotting food, etc.— via water to peripheral water bodies. Often this mere shifting of waste to other inhabited ecologies either displaced or created new types of disease outbreak. For example, the expected increase in Sydney’s population around the 1850s that accompanied the discovery of gold led to the creation of a sewerage scheme for accessible parts of Sydney (Fam et al. 2009). Consequently, by the 1880s the city was fully serviced with piped water, which meant that large volumes of wastewater were being pushed through underground sewers into the harbour (Coward 1988). The discharge of waste into Sydney Harbour has been credited with causing Scarlet Fever and Measles epidemics in the 1860s. In addition to displacing sewage, practices of ventilation and purification also unleashed new sources of odour in the urban landscape. Industrialising cities began to be organised and segregated more emphatically around hygiene at this time, as cemeteries and slaughterhouses were deemed inappropriate neighbours for hospitals, houses and other institutions. The importance of water in cleanliness and deodorisation also began to transform domestic spaces. One of the key projects of the hygienists was to separate drinking water from wastewater, improve the integrity of pipes and ensure sewage traps were implemented in homes (Tomes 1997). The association between disease and water also meant that people began to boil water prior to drinking, while damp cellars meant that children’s nurseries were moved to the upper levels of houses. Victorian homeowners were also encouraged to build on dry soil to prevent damp and dank environments from forming. The introduction of water into the domestic space after the introduction of germ theory in the late nineteenth century was a significant tool for enabling the upper classes to deodorise and civilise the poor by purifying them of disease and immorality. Another enduring domestic transformation established during the mid to late nineteenth century was the increasing impermeability of domestic surfaces (Lupton and Miller 1996). As miasmas and infected water were both perceived as capable of seeping into the walls and bones of buildings, practices of painting, plastering and white-washing walls

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became commonplace. With water becoming increasingly favoured as the medium with which infectious entities could be carried away or destroyed, the need to make surfaces washable, and thus impenetrable through varnishes or glazes, increased (Bachelard 1983). The connection of domestic spaces to sanitary infrastructures across Europe, the United States and Australia in the late nineteenth century transformed interiors through new cleanliness rituals and new ways of partitioning space (Lupton and Miller 1996). The need to keep different water flows distinct meant that areas for bathing, laundering and cooking were separated. To preserve privacy, bathrooms and windows had minimal exposure through openings to the rest of the house, while living areas were opened up to light and air. The connection of homes to urban-scale sanitation systems through plumbing not only changed the way hygiene was practiced in the home, but established new ecological relations enabled by the flows of materials and microbes between domestic spaces and the vast networks of pipes. Domestic rituals were also transformed by the association between disease epidemics, such as smallpox and the plague, and domestic and personal cleanliness, which placed the burden of family immunity increasingly on individuals (Smith 2007). The installation of sewer traps and water filtration at a household level gave homeowners a sense of control and duty. However, there was also additional pressure to fulfil domestic purification rituals as a matter of moral responsibility, particularly for women. From the 1870s authorities began aggressive public health campaigns targeting the domestic public space and the women who were considered responsible for it (Tomes 1997). Domestic manuals instructing women on how to keep their homes clean, and the moral responsibility to do so, proliferated in this period. This can be seen in publication such as Essie’s Sanitary Arrangements (1874), Hartshorne’s Our Homes, in the US and in France, hygiene manuals such as L’lllustration and Le Petit Journal . Newspapers also begun to include instructions for the prevention of epidemics via proper home maintenance. The individualisation of hygiene risk management, and its dissociation from local environments, progressed further with germ theory, as bodies were increasingly seen as the vector of pathogenic germs, rather than

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atmospheric or ecological conditions. Although the decline of Galenic and miasmatic ideas occurred at differing rates in different communities outside of the medical establishment (Mitman 2005), hygienic reforms that began with the belief in miasmic and zymotic disease harmonised with, and were eventually amplified by, germ theory (Tomes 1997). The increasing tendency to understand the home as a place where contagious pathogenic particles reside relies on a notion of discreet, identifiable essential entities and the presumption of a pure substrate into which they enter. The domestic purification rituals at this time laid the ground for future antimicrobial practices that are based on the logic of invader annihilation and a disregard for local ecological relations. Germ theory had great implications for building design and maintenance, and the broader landscapes that they were situated within and serviced by. In her book on ecological change as disease within Central Valley California, Linda Nash (2006) highlights that for a long period more ecological conceptions of health, including miasma theory, existed in tension with a development and industrialisation imperative. However, germ theory helped definitively tip the balance to the modernisers by denouncing many of the previously important ecological elements of pathogenicity. Germ theory provided a ready excuse for authorities to succumb to snowballing industrial progress and growth of cities not only in Europe but in more recently colonised areas such as California and Australia, by decoupling the environment and health, and human connection to ecological systems more broadly. This enabled public health professionals to portray ‘…the broader environment as a passive and homogenous space. [where] The only actors… were human beings and certain microscopic pathogens’ (Nash 2006, 210). Much like the house, purity was the assumed base state of landscapes – both “natural” and agricultural in the late nineteenth century. As a result, proper sterilisation to prevent contamination was considered the solution to maintaining productivity and enabling development. This partitioning of disease into discreet entities divorced from local conditions shifted responsibility for who should manage disease and opened up landscapes to be modified in various ways based on new urban, agricultural and industrial priorities. This resulted in the concentration of

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knowledge about disease in medical professionals and the concentration of environmental knowledge in those tasked with modifying it, such as engineers and agronomists (Nash 2006). It was in the context of industrial progress, urban epidemics and the separation of health from environmental concerns, that the enduring influence of sanitary modernity emerged. The shift within scientific and public health orthodoxy did not, of course, neatly translate and disseminate to wider populations whose daily practices and understanding of the world was firmly imbued with the sense of the role of landscapes in disease. The infiltration of ontological medicine into the beliefs, practices and built environment was shaped by the localised patchworks of ideas, objects and practices that existed prior. However, by the First World War, the broad cultural currency of germ theory had increased in places like Northern Europe, North America and Australia, and was beginning to have a noticeable effect of the structure of cities and daily life. As the laboratory science of bacteriology progressed into the twentieth century, ideas and methods that sought the creation of pure, controlled spaces via the increasing encapsulation of human life into engineered, sealed cocoons, accelerated. These ideals of hygienic encapsulation were central to the ethos of the modernist design project that rose in the early twentieth century in Europe, particularly in public and domestic design. While the modernist design lineage contains a multitude of ideas and practices, and various permutations specific to particular times, cultures, material landscapes and individual personalities, a shared legacy can be decerned through a common set of aesthetic and social commitments.3 The general themes and design elements I focus on here are those I propose have been formative in the development of the modern technocapsule—from seemingly trivial latent design features, to ideas about what a dwelling should be for and the type of body that should occupy it.

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The Substance of Modernism As a movement in architecture and applied design, modernism refers to a global cultural movement beginning in the early twentieth century that sought to reshape society based on modern industrial values. While its proponents had diverse views and the later instantiations of the movement were altered through the lessons of the former, and in no small way by the Second World War, a number of defining features can be drawn out. Perhaps above all, modernism is underpinned by the idea that cities and bodies alike can be reformed and improved through design. More specifically, modernists were committed to the integration of form with social process in order to create a new classless and hygienic body politic (Campbell 2005). Particularly in the beginning, the movement was motivated by the unhygienic state that the urban poor in Europe and the United States were living in, in combination with the new hygiene imperative of germ theory and the promises offered by new industrial technologies and building materials, initially including cast iron, plate glass and reinforced concrete. The combined forces of fetid cities, persistent disease epidemics and industrial expansion culminated to produce modernism as a unique force bent on purifying and cleansing cities of stale materials and beliefs through the utilisation of new materials and technologies, and means of excluding contaminants from dwelling spaces. The conceptualisation of germs as entities that may, with the right design and hygiene practices, be excluded from indoor environments was central to the movement. In this way, the moral imperative for urban landscape reform that emerged was explicitly tied to the notion of the pathogen as a discreet, consistent, identifiable harbinger of disease. In writing about the influence of tuberculosis on the history and aesthetic of modernism, Margaret Campbell (2005) notes how preventing the recurring epidemics of the nineteenth century provided the aesthetic and moral foundation of the movement, and that tuberculosis statistics were often used to promote the expansion of new hygienic housing for the working classes in Europe. They saw their principles and aesthetic as the most functional means to enable a hygienic lifestyle for the masses.

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In addition to the acceptance of germs as essential things, a substance ontology is also deeply embedded in the core of modernist design in its mechanist conceptualisation of both buildings and bodies. According to architectural historian Paul Greenhalgh the key principles of modernist design include function, progress, anti-historicism and social morality (Greenhalgh 1990). ‘Form follows function’, one of the most well-known catch cries of the movement, refers to the belief that the architects were not creating a new style, but that the forms created were guided entirely by their purpose and that humans, via technology, have the capacity for complete control of their environment. One of the most prominent modernist architects in the 1920s, the Swiss-French Le Corbusier, famously extolled that ‘A house is a machine for living in’. For modernism at this time, mechanist ideas generated an optimism and a hubris that total control and optimisation could be achieved, and that natural systems could be subverted to meet the narrowly defined and universal needs of the human body. For Le Corbusier, and other notable modernist architects and designers like Adolf Loos, purity and hygiene were the key requirements driving the physical form of buildings. In outlining his vision, Le Corbusier describes the dwellings he is reacting against is his quest for more didactic control over the domestic realm: if we bring our eyes to bear on the old and rotten buildings that form our snail-shell, our habitation, which crush us in our daily contact with them—putrid and useless and unproductive. Everywhere can be seen machines which serve to produce something and produce it admirably, in a clean sort of way. The machine that we live in is an old coach full of tuberculosis. (1946, 256–257)

The pairing of the imperative to create affordable, abundant social housing, and to develop a space which allowed for complete hygienic control resulted in the first examples of ‘cellular’ architecture; the proto-models of high-density, sealed, bright, techno-capsules today. Le Corbusier’s innovative basic house cell, the 1922 immeuble-villa was turned into a model for high-density urban living in Marseilles (Campbell 2005). These cells were reputedly inspired by a fifteen square-metre

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room he occupied on an ocean liner from Europe to South America (Klose 2015). The forms of dwellings and transport structures converged in this period as both came to be based on idealised capsules of privacy and environmental control; train compartments became further enclosed, while vehicles with open tops were encircled by windshields and roofs (Otter 2017). With the increasing move towards greater enclosure and a reconfiguration of interior/exterior relations came changes to the forms and spatial characteristics of indoor spaces. An aesthetic grounded in cleanliness, functionality, light and a break with the dank and stuffy past came to characterise modernist indoor spaces. The shedding of superfluous ornamentation, and materials in which germs could hide, such as fabrics and wood, were central to this aesthetic. The dark, soft, encumbered features of the previous century were replaced with light, smooth, non-porous interior surfaces, preferably surrounded by transparent glass, which allowed in light, and signified that neither germs nor unhygienic practices could be concealed (Wigley 2001; Lupton and Miller 1996). The manifestation of these hygienic mechanist ideas in domestic spaces was led by the bathroom. The establishment of plumbing, and ‘mastery’ over water in the late nineteenth century was central to the evolution of the modernist movement. Adolf Loos stated as early as 1898 that ‘there would have been no nineteenth century’ without the plumber as the ‘billeting officer of culture’ (cited in Campkin and Dobraszczyk 2007). Loos, who became an influential modernist architect in the early twentieth century, believed that the aesthetic and moral impetus that drove improvements in urban sanitation and water supply should serve to guide architecture across the board. Design historians Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller (1996) explain that bathrooms were the only domestic spaces that represented a complete break from tradition, unencumbered by historical styles. They required new forms and materials that embodied the values of efficiency, functionality, hygiene and impermeability. Importantly, the bathroom was also perceived as a ‘non-style’ and thus epitomised ‘form following function’. It consequently became the aesthetic model from which the future of domestic design was set to follow. This attitude is captured well in House and Garden magazine in the United States, which published in 1917 that:

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…the bathroom is an index to civilisation. Time was when it sufficed for a man to be civilised in his mind. We now require a civilisation of the body. And in no line of house building has there been so great progress in recent years as in the bathroom.” ‘Bathrooms and civilisation’ (House and Garden Vol XXX No. 2 feb 1917): 90 (cited in Lupton and Miller 1996)

New materials were essential to this hygienic ‘civilisation’ of spaces and bodies. As noted above, wood, marble, fabric and wallpaper were all known for their porosity and thus their capacity to harbour germs. New, hard, white, washable materials and surfaces conferred the desired sense of mastery over the domestic landscape by affording the perception that dirt and microbes will be easily spotted and eliminated. Ceramic tiles, enamelled iron and vitreous china consequently became common in bathrooms. This shift in materiality was accompanied by a move away from ornamentation and movable furniture. As bathroom furniture became tied to stationary plumbing and pipes, which often leaked, the vulnerability of wood and other materials to infiltration by water became increasingly apparent. The shift from ‘nomadic’ to ‘set’ bathroom furniture, including sinks, vanities, bathtubs and toilets which ‘seamlessly’ transitioned into the floor and walls became the model of progress. The vilification of ornamentation across the domestic space was linked not only to the ability of nooks and crannies to hide dirt and germs, but their status as the anthesis to efficiency and functionality. The aesthetic model of the bathroom was eventually extended to the rest of the house, as surfaces became increasingly smooth and seamless. Whiteness was also central to the modernist’s visual and moral repertoire as it gained momentum in Europe in the interwar years. In Germany, several experimental houses were designed by leading European modernist architects for the Weissenhof Seidlung (white housing) exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927 (Campbell 2005). Mark Wigley (2001) explains that whiteness became a dominant visual code for hygiene: Modern architecture joins the doctor’s white coat, the white tiles of the bathroom, the white walls of the hospital, and so on. Yet the argument

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is not about hygiene per se. It is about a certain look of cleanliness. Or, more precisely, a cleansing of the look, a hygiene of vision itself. Whitewash purifies the eye rather than the building. Indeed it reveals the central role of vision in hygiene.

Whiteness not only suggests a hostile environment for dirt and germs, but signifies the shift in modes of sensory evaluation for hygiene from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries (Drake 1997). As discussed above, the maintenance and assessment of a healthy environment throughout the nineteenth century was based more heavily on olfaction and the detection and management of foul odours. After hygienic reforms enabled a significant deodorisation of bodies and urban areas vision, and its proxies for hygiene and purity, began to be held up as the dominant sense of modernity. Aside from a shift to this visual currency, the modernist obsession with nonporous white surfaces was also emblematic of the purity ontology that underpinned the movement. Purity, in this case, is profoundly entwined with an underlying substance metaphysics that allows for entities, such as bodies and interior spaces, to be discreet, partitioned and controllable closed systems.4 The normative standards for bodily perfection that were part of this metaphysics held it to the same standards of form and function as buildings. This synchronicity between body and building as pure, perfect machines is perhaps best encapsulated by the ‘Glass Man’ or ‘Transparent Man’ created in the 1920s for the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden in Germany; an enormous new campus of modernist buildings designed by Wilhelm Kreis, with fixtures by notable modernist designers such as Walter Gropius (Schnapp 2013). Transparent Man depicts ‘…the human body as a machine: understandable, immaculate and, if well cared for, durable’. (Deutsches-Hygiene-Museum 2020) The purpose of the museum and its main centrepiece was to instruct the masses in how to maintain their bodies to ensure optimum health and hygiene. As Jeffrey Schnapp (2013, 184) puts it, Glass Man’s purpose was to:

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…promote the proper programming and maintenance of the body’s machinery in the name of productivity and progress, and to model regimented ideals of collective individuality, stripped of corporeal or psychic anomalies and aligned with the values of science.

This attitude was illustrated by the label under the model, exclaiming: ‘Man as a Prime Example of Technical Perfection’. The Glass Man was constructed based on a ‘statistically average’ skeleton and fashioned using wires and other modern materials, to ‘reveal’ the inner workings of the body. Not only did this depiction not account for corporeal diversity—excluding non-white, female and disabled bodies entirely—but its boundaries did not acknowledge the flows of materials, energy and other organisms that make bodies an ongoing process of co-constitution with their environments. Bodies were considered to be machines, living within machines, each of which could be controlled with precision. The mechanist understanding of the body that these early twentieth century modernist dwellings and landscapes were constructed for, is based on an ontology in which stability is taken as the base condition, while change and aberration are taken to be the exception. This view of the body does not allow for either diversity, in a strictly genetic or biosocial sense, or the ways that bodies change with the environments they are exposed to. This is evidenced in the use of a ‘standard’ skeleton for Glass Man—presumably a young, able-bodied, white male adult— and the universal prescriptions for the types of living machines to be indiscriminately constructed everywhere, regardless of prior landscape characteristics or the diverse needs of occupant bodies. In addition to uniformity in idealised forms of dwelling and bodies, universal principles of modernist landscape engineering were applied across the developed world and newly colonised regions. In his planning schemes for Algiers, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Barcelona, Stockholm, Geneva and Antwerp, Le Corbusier applied the same basic set of principles, outlined in his 1929 text The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning. These were characterised by tall skyscrapers set well apart from one another and often planned entirely from the air. Within these visions, Le Corbusier embraced industrial models inspired by Taylorist

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and Fordist strategies to reorganise society. These imperatives can be seen as part of a broader thrust of modernity which historian Warwick Anderson (2006) argues was entirely predicated on the erasure of local environments and attempts to recreate them as controlled, homogeneous spaces. Modern health is modern because it is based on the idea that health can be considered in isolation from local environmental characteristics (Nash 2006). The approach to landscape management and building construction utilised by the early modernist architects occurred in unison with colonisation. Their health objectives were based on a perceived need to tame and civilise local bodies and environments, particularly in settler colonial societies, rather than understand and adapt to local environmental conditions and disease ecologies (Nash 2006).

The Spread of the International Style While the core foundations of modernist style were arguably laid in Western Europe in the interwar years its enduring global influence on urban forms occurred from the Second World War. What is now termed the ‘International Style’ is a branch of modernism, particularly influenced and promoted by Mies van der Rohe, Jacobus Oud, Le Corbusier, Richard Neutra and Philip Johnson that was taken out of Europe, primarily to the United States, as German architects fled the rise of Nazism (Riley 1998). It was in the post-war period of economic expansion in the United States that this style bloomed. One of the defining features of the International Style was its indifference to location, positioning and climate. The vision was based on universally applicable ‘solutions’ for living, regardless of local history or national vernacular styles. Like other branches of modernism, the International Style embraced radical simplification of form, the rejection of ornamentation and the adoption of new materials such as glass, steel and concrete (Banham 1984). However, their focus was more emphatically on the construction of high-rise towers, where they promoted the transparency of buildings, industrial mass-production techniques and a ‘machine aesthetic’. According to the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus

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(2004) the style is also characterised by ‘… an emphasis on volume over mass, the use of lightweight, mass-produced, industrial materials, rejection of all ornament and colour, repetitive modular forms, and the use of flat surfaces, typically alternating with areas of glass’. The forms and techniques of building introduced via the International Style and modernism more broadly were the stylistic force behind the drive to build upwards in the 1950s. The post-war population expansion and housing shortages across Europe and the United States led to the construction of large-scale government-financed housing projects. These projects were often in the dilapidated areas of urban centres where land was available (Klemek 2011). The ethos behind many of these developments was distinctly modernist in sentiment, motivated by the belief everyone should have access to adequate housing, and that modern building techniques could provide the machines to meet the basic needs of the population. However, in reality, the apartments were poorly built and many rapidly turned to slums that lacked basic services and provisions for conducting everyday lives (Whyte 2009). In the case of the United States, Taylor (2019) argues these developments not only failed to erase forms of housing exclusion that disproportionately affected Black city dwellers, but initiated a new form of ‘predatory inclusion’. The inadequacy of the International Style for the requirements of occupants and the surrounding environment were particularly pronounced in places such as Nigeria, where the expense and unavailability of skills, materials required for maintenance and an unreliable power supply meant that buildings fell into rapid disrepair and were often left unoccupied (Prucnal-Ogunsote 2002).5 While the international failures of the International Style resulted in a diminished enthusiasm for the construction of high-rise residential development from the early 1970s through the 1980s, particularly in the United Kingdom, increasing competition for land and inflated housing markets not only reinvigorated high rise living from the 1990s, but the refurbishment of some of the modernist towers for modern city dwellers, such as London’s aptly named Spa Green Estate. While the failures of the universalising, mechanist tendencies of modernism gradually became evident in the post-war period, many of the design features, and indeed approaches to landscape management

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established in the early modernist period have persisted. The limitations of features such as cascading glass walls in hot environments, and the association between modernist towers and slums somewhat tarnished the grand social project. Postmodernist design and architecture emerged in the 1960s in reaction to the modernists’ rejection of vernacular cultures and styles, and in the process muddied and even stigmatised subsequent attempts by architects and designers to achieve social reform through design. Despite these moments of reflexivity and attempted correction, many of the most important core tenets of dwelling and its association with immunity established by the early modernists persist in modern techno-capsules, such as: minimal ornamentation; open floor plans that unite living and kitchen spaces and segregate appropriately non-porous, white bathrooms, and bedrooms; abundant glass to let in light while sealing out the outside world and the use of modern industrial production techniques and mass-produced materials such as steel, concrete and glass. It is not only these features, but the universalising and mechanist philosophy of modernism, that underpins the propagation of modern techno-capsules across global cities. A brief reminder: I am not implying that these features have transformed all buildings or forms of dwelling, but represent a template for the middle class urban techno-capsules at the centre of this book. Within these buildings, health remains manifest almost exclusively as a latent nod to germ-orientedHygiene6 with minimal concern for the impact of or on local ecologies. Indeed, disregard for local variables has arguably increased with the emergence of multinational architectural mega-agencies and the capacity of air-conditioning to provide a comfortable environment irrespective of climatically sensitive building design (which I discuss in the next chapter). It is these constructions, and their reliance on adjunct technologies such as air-conditioning and water heaters, that have provided the scaffolding for the indoor micro-ecologies that predominate in urban techno-capsules around the world today.

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Conclusions This chapter has provided a fly over, at altitude, of some of the key moments in the transition from physiological to ontological medicine in the Western tradition, and in particular germ theory, on the formation of modern techno-capsule dwellings. The emergence of the laboratory as a site in which discreet pathogens could be reliably isolated was pivotal in cementing a substance-based understanding of immunity and disease in not only medicine but the built environment. The image of bodies, buildings and landscapes as machines that could be engineered according to universal principles, and would function optimally if kept pure and free of invading contaminants, continues to pervade urban structures, materials and hygiene practices today. The consequence of framing healthy bodies and dwellings as machines with defence systems that keep the pure inside from the impure outside has been the obfuscation of the ecological conditions that produce many forms of pathogenicity. Moreover, it obscures how and when the boundaries of supposedly unimpeachable things, such as bodies and germs, are porous to the processes they are entangled with. In the following chapter I explore how these boundaries have started to be problematised by scientific developments in the late twentieth century that have reinserted bodies into environments by linking urbanisation with the rise of inflammatory disease.

Notes 1. In the 1670s Dutch textile merchant Antony Van Leeuwenhoek fashioned his own single lens microscopes through which to view the life in his home (Ford 1981). While others, like Robert Hooke, had used microscopes to observe the hidden elements of indoor life, such as the eyes and legs of flies, Leeuwenhoek is often credited with the discovery of protists—single celled life. The objects of his examinations included pepper, water in gutters, wheat, cheese and his own sperm. While Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries were recognised by The Royal Society at the time, the practice of using his microscope was

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deemed too arduous. As a result, the study of microbial life lay all but dormant until the early nineteenth century, while the study of indoor microbial diversity was not reinvigorated again until the twentieth century. The acceptance and interpretation of these ideas varied substantially depending on socio-geographical context. For example Nash (2006) and Bashford (2004) discuss its interpretation in warm settler colonial contexts, while Tomes and Warner (1997) illustrate how germ theories are not one thing and have always been shaped by local context. While I focus here on the aspects of modernist design that I propose are latent in urban techno-capsules, these are not the only instantiations of modernism, and the universalising tendencies of many of the designers led to inevitable forms of local reappropriation and resistance in places being colonised by these forms of architecture. Some insightful references to the experience of modernism in different locations are: Greenhalgh (1990), Isenstadt and Rizvi (2011), Guillén (2004) and Kalia (2006). For a detailed history of the notion of purity and the various ways it is still operationalised see Alexis Shotwell’s Against Purity (Shotwell 2016). Bogda Prucnal-Ogunsote (2002) discusses how a regionally sensitive Modern architecture emerged in reaction to the International Style in Nigeria, referred to as the New West African Style and the Regional Trend. While there has been an increasing emphasis on the provision of urban green space by developers, as I will discuss in the final chapter, it is rarely designed on the basis of an integrated indoor/outdoor ecology.

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References Anderson, Warwick. 2006. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Bachelard, Gaston. 1983. Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. Dallas: Pegasus Foundation. Banham, Reyner. 1984. Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Barnett, Richard. 2014. The Sick Rose: Or; Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration. London: Thames & Hudson. Bashford, Alison. 2004. Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and public health. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Byrne, Joseph P. 2008. “Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics and Plagues.” Medical Education 1100: 1500. Campbell, Margaret. 2005. “What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism: The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture.” Medical history 49 (4): 463–488. Campkin, Ben, and Rosie Cox. 2012. Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination. London: IB Tauris. Campkin, Ben, and Paul Dobraszczyk. 2007. “Architecture and Dirt Introduction.” The Journal of Architecture 12 (4): 347–351. Cohen, Ed. 2009. A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Biopolitics, and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Cohn, Samuel K. 2008. “4 Epidemiology of the Black Death and Successive Waves of Plague.” Medical History 52 (S27): 74–100. Corbin, Alain. 1986. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination: Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Corbusier, Le, and Frederick Etchells. 1946. Towards a New Architecture. Translated by Frederick Etchells. New York NY: Dover Publications. Coward, Dan. 1988. Out of Sight: Sydney’s Environmental History, 1851–1981. Canberra: Australian National University. Curtis, Valerie A. 2007. “Dirt, Disgust and Disease: A Natural History of Hygiene.” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 61 (8): 660–664. DeLacy, Margaret. 2016. “Introduction: Medical Theory in Early Modern Europe.” In The Germ of an Idea, edited by Margaret DeLacy, 1–15. New York NY: Springer.

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Deutsches-Hygiene-Museum. 2020. “The Seven Theme Rooms”, accessed 25 May. https://www.dhmd.de/en/exhibitions/permanent-exhibition/the-seventheme-rooms/. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London and New York: Routledge & Keegan Paul. Drake, Scott. 1997. “The Architectural Antimephitic: Modernism and Deodorisation.” Architectural Theory Review 2 (2): 17–28. El-Khoury, Rodolphe 1996. “Polish and Deodorize: Paving the City in LateEighteenth-Century France.” Assemblage (31): 7–15. Fam, Dena, Abby Lopes, Juliet Willetts, and Cynthia Mitchell. 2009. “The Challenge of System Change: An Historical Analysis of Sydney’s Sewer Systems.” Design Philosophy Papers 7 (3): 195–208. Ford, Brian J. 1981. “The Van Leeuwenhoek Specimens.” Notes and records of the Royal Society of London 36 (1): 37–59. Forty, Adrian. 1995. Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750. London: Thames and Hudson. Frelick, Nancy. 2005. “Contagions of Love: Textual Transmission.” In Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe, edited by Claire Clarlin, 47–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan. George, Rose. 2011. “The Blue Girl: Dirt in the City.” In Dirt. The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life, edited by Rosie Cox. London: Profile Books. Getty. 2004. International Style. In Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online. http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=international+style&logic= AND¬e=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300021472. Goubert, Jean-Pierre. 1989. The conquest of water: the advent of health in the industrial age. Edited by trans. Andrew Wilson. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1988. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Oakland CA: University of California Press. Greenhalgh, Paul. 1990. Modernism in Design. London: Reaktion books. Guillén, Mauro F. 2004. “Modernism Without Modernity: The Rise of Modernist Architecture in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, 1890–1940.” Latin American Research Review, 6–34. Hume, David. 1979 (1759). The History Of England Under The House Of Tudor: Comprehending the Reigns of K. Henry VII., K. Henry VIII., K. Edward VI., Q. Mary and Q. Elizabeth: In Two Volumes. Vol. 1. Millar. Isenstadt, Sandy, and Kishwar Rizvi. 2011. Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century. Seattle WA: University of Washington press.

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Kalia, Ravi. 2006. “Modernism, Modernization and Post-Colonial India: A Reflective Essay.” Planning Perspectives 21 (2):133–156. Kirksey, Eben. 2015. “Species: A Praxiographic Study.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21 (4): 758–780. Klemek, Christopher. 2011. The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal: Postwar Urbanism from New York to Berlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Klose, Alexander. 2015. The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Lupton, Ellen, and J. Abbott Miller. 1996. Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste. Princeton NJ: Princeton Architectural Press. McMichael, A. J. 2001. “Human Culture, Ecological Change, and Infectious Disease: Are We Experiencing History’s Fourth Great Transition?” Ecosystem Health 7 (2): 107–115. Melosi, Martin V. 2008. The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Méthot, Pierre-Olivier, and Samuel Alizon. 2015. “Emerging Disease and the Evolution of Virulence: The Case of the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic.” In Classification, Disease and Evidence, edited by Lambert G. Huneman P., Silberstein., 93–130. Dordrecht: Springer. Mitman, Gregg. 2005. “In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American Environmental History.” Environmental History 10 (2): 184–210. Nash, Linda. 2006. Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge. Oakland CA: University of California Press. Nicholson, Daniel J, and John Dupré. 2018. Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nordenfelt, Lennart. 1995. “On the Ontology of Disease.” In On the Nature of Health, 151–173. New York NY: Springer. Otter, Chris. 2017. “Encapsulation: Inner Worlds and Their Discontents.” Journal of Literature and Science 10 (2): 55–66. Pantin, Isabelle. 2005. “Fracastoro’s De Contagione and medieval reflection on ‘action at a distance’: Old and new trends in Renaissance discourse on contagion.” In Imagining contagion in early modern Europe, edited by Claire L Carlin, 3–15. New York NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Parker, Robert. 1996. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Prucnal-Ogunsote, B. 2002. “The International Style in Nigeria: Technological and Cultural Bridge-or Disaster.” Journal of Environmental Technology 1 (1): 102–114. Riley, Terence. 1998. “Portrait of the Curator as a Young Man.” Philip Johnson and the Museum of Modern Art, 34–69. Rütten, Thomas, and Martina King. 2013. “Introduction.” In Contagionism and Contagious Diseases: Medicine and Literature 1880–1933, edited by Thomas Rütten and Martina King. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. 2013. “Crystalline Bodies: Fragments of a Cultural History of Glass.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 20 (2): 173–194. Shotwell, Alexis. 2016. Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times. Minneapolis Min: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, Virginia. 2007. Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2019. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Books. Tomes, Nancy. 1997. “Spreading the Germ Theory: Sanitary Science and Home Economics, 1880–1930.” In Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession, edited by Sarah Stage and Virginia B. Vincenti, 34–54. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Tomes, Nancy. 1999. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American life. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Tomes, Nancy J, and John Harley Warner. 1997. “Introduction to Special Issue on Rethinking the Reception of the Germ Theory of Disease: Comparative Perspectives.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 52 (1): 7–16. Whyte, William. 2009. “The Englishness of English Architecture: Modernism and the Making of a National International Style, 1927–1957.” Journal of British Studies 48 (2): 441–465. Wigley, Mark. 2001. White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

3 Inflammatory Urban Atmospheres: Biodiversity, Climate Control and the Materiality of Buildings

The emergence of urban techno-capsules as discreet, atmospherically controllable environments has continued to accelerate over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Technological advances have served this trajectory, making cocoons ever more comfortable and responsive to the needs of modern bodies. The latter half of the twentieth century saw changes to what homes, and rooms within them, were considered to be for. Affluent, urban indoor spaces have grown to reflect changing desires associated with entertainment, work and relaxation, in addition to cooking, bathing and sleeping. For example, in a study of changes in Danish bathroom design over time Quitzau and Røpke (2009) show that while the idea of hygiene is still the primary determinant of material arrangements and practices for the room, the bathroom has taken on additional roles since the 1990s, including as an oasis in which people can relax, escape and sensually indulge themselves. As these types of homes have increasingly come to reflect technologically enabled socio-corporeal functions and desires, the disconnection between interior and exterior has grown. Urban medium and high-rise dwellings are arguably in greater denial of the ecological vagaries of their locales than ever. The capacity to selectively partition out parts of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Wakefield-Rann, Life Indoors, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2_3

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environment—to shut out a noisy street, or calibrate rooms to desired temperatures, lighting and fragrances—has increased the expectation that we should be able to do so. At the same time, the ecological systems in which cities and bodies are entangled have experienced unprecedented connectivity and disruption, making it impossible to ever truly practice what Szasz (2007) calls ‘inverted quarantine’ from ecological disruption. While sterile cocoons remain a well-maintained illusion, COVID 19 has instructed us in our hyperconnectivity to a common global disease pool, facilitated by networked society. The potential distribution networks for disease are more extensive and entangled than at any other time in history. In addition to viruses, the twentieth century saw the mass movement of organic materials such as human bodies, seeds, organs, plants, meat and their passenger parasites and microbes. The disruption of localised ecologies is also associated with the habitat and ecosystem disruption that came with the large-scale colonial landscape engineering projects I discussed in the last chapter. Increasing urbanisation, the damming of rivers, mining and industrial agriculture, among other grand infrastructure projects, have seen the pathogen ecologies of human societies shift. These effects have been compounded by the proliferation of new synthetic chemicals since the early twentieth century; a massive ecological curve ball that has altered not only every ecology on Earth but the biological configurations that will be inherited for generations to come. I will discuss these in further detail in the following chapter. The overwhelming failure to consider ecological entanglement as a core concern in Western medicine and the construction of dwellings and landscapes, has led to the exacerbation of many existing environmental health problems and the creation of new ones. While there has been an increasing recognition of the impacts of biodiversity loss and habitat destruction over the past 50 years, there has been relatively less attention paid to the importance of building materials, product use, and the connection of dwellings to food, water and sanitation systems in the creation of current pathogen ecologies. This chapter considers how a distinctive hyperconnected twentieth and twenty-first century disease ecology began to make itself apparent in contradiction of prior theories of health, immunity and ecology.

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I start with two developments that illustrate how thinking about indoor ecologies began to shift across specific scientific communities (1) increasing epidemiological evidence of the correlation between inflammatory disease and wealthy, sanitised urban areas from around the 1950s and (2) non-culture-based DNA testing. These two advances spurred the field of indoor microbiology to increasingly see building interiors as more than simply places where pathogens may hide, and start exploring them as a unique biome. The research trajectory set in train from this point began to erode the boundaries drawn around discreet entities, and challenge their presumed immutability. Research into the permeability of bodies to their environments has challenged concepts such as immunity, pathogens, genes and species. Based on this burgeoning field of indoor ecological research, the latter part of this chapter explores some of the most important changes in the evolution of modern techno-capsules that have radically altered our indoor ecologies. While there are many that I could highlight I have focused on climate control and certain building materials as exemplary cases, before turning to the transformative role of late industrial chemical toxicants and antimicrobials on indoor ecosystems in the following chapter.

Urban Inflammation: Immunity, Biodiversity and ‘Old Friends’ Around the 1950s public health institutions began to notice that there was an increasing prevalence of chronic inflammatory conditions in specific regions of the world (Okada et al. 2010; Isolauri et al. 2004). These diseases, such as allergic and autoimmune diseases (numbering between 80–100 types) are diverse in terms of the bodily systems they affect, but all share a number of common characteristics. One of the functions of the immune system is to differentiate the body’s own cells from foreign entities that may pose a threat and need to be attacked. The way that our immune system does this is by reading ‘antigens’, molecules that allow the body to identify different types of substances. In both allergic and autoimmune responses, something gets muddled in

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this process of identification and attack. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system wrongly identifies healthy human tissues as a threat and starts to assault them. For the majority of us, our bodies can differentiate between our own and foreign antigens, such as bacteria and viruses. For people with an autoimmune disease, something triggers the body to start attacking its own tissue. Based on different triggering factors, autoimmune diseases can manifest as many conditions, such as Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease, Type 1 diabetes, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Allergic disease also involves a misidentification of antigens by the immune system, but in this case, it is not the body’s own tissue, but benign external entities that it reacts to, such as pollen or peanuts. Allergic diseases include atopic asthma, food allergies and eczema, among others. While the triggers for these different groups of diseases differ, people who suffer from autoimmune conditions also often suffer from allergies. The other factor strongly binding these diseases is geography: they predominantly occur in urbanised, wealthy regions of the world with sophisticated public sanitation systems. While allergic and autoimmune conditions did not originate in the twentieth century, many grew to epidemic proportions in its latter half. In wealthier regions of the world, these diseases have become roughly twice as common every two decades since 1950 (Bach 2002). For example, in parts of Germany, the incidence of multiple sclerosis doubled from 1969 to 1986 (Poser et al. 1989), the rate of Crohn’s disease in northern Europe more than tripled between the 1950s and 1990s (Farrokhyar, Swarbrick, and Irvine 2001) and the prevalence of allergic disease doubled in Swedish children between 1979 and 1991(Åberg et al. 1995). This rate continues to increase in many places; the US has seen an increase in allergies by half, and asthma by a third just in the last 20 years. Allergic and autoimmune disease have always been tied to geography. While there are some recorded cases of over-sensitive immune systems in antiquity, such as a pharaoh reputed to have died of anaphylaxis from a bee sting (Ring 2014), allergic disease first began to appear as a notable trend as seasonal allergic rhinitis (hay fever) within Europe, and particularly England, in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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One of the key reasons proposed for this rise was changes to the agricultural landscape in England associated with a reform of the Corn Laws in 1847, which permitted low-cost wheat to be imported from the Ukraine (Briggs 2000). As a result, dairy herds and Italian Rye grass were introduced to English farm land, which pollinate more heavily than the traditional grasses (Johnson and Marsh 1965). A rise in hay fever was also observed in the USA, in which the gradual increase in cropping is thought to have increased the spread of ragweed (Platts-Mills 2015). These upsurges led to additional research attention into allergies, and an understanding of the role of the immune system in hypersensitivity started to emerge in the 1920s. In 1923 American allergists Coca and Cooke first introduced the term Atopy (from the Greek atopia, out of place) to refer to the link they were beginning to see between the immunoglobulin (Ig) E molecule and hypersensitivity (Cohen, Dworetzky, and Frick 2003). However, treatment was still a long way off. By 1946 hay fever induced by ragweed had become such as problem in New York that the city council initiated a campaign to eradicate it (Walzer and Siegel 1956). The significance of the problem in London also led to the first trials of immunotherapy for grass pollen hay fever in the 1950s (Frankland 1954). Theories began to emerge that attempted to explain this rapid rise, often to epidemic proportions, of allergic and autoimmune disease. It was not until around 30 years ago that a cohesive theory gained traction. Based on an existing understanding that the rise in allergic disorders was correlated with a decrease in infectious diseases, epidemiologists began to investigate this relationship. Perhaps most famously, the epidemiologist David Strachan proposed in 1989 that there is an inverse relationship between the number of siblings in a family and the development of allergies (Strachan 1989). The mechanism he proposed was that the transfer of infections between siblings or through prenatal exposure conferred some form of protection against allergies. This theory, which he termed the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, was formulated based on an initial study involving 17,414 British children for 23 years and the factors that contributed to the development of hay fever—including social and environmental variables. This research established a clear link between smaller household size and the development of allergies. However, a

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subsequent study conducted by Strachan (2000), looking at participants from both England and New Zealand, found that family size alone could not explain the increase in hay fever prevalence and was likely to be only one of many variables. While not providing the reasons for the rise in allergies, this study transformed the course of research into allergic disorders by demonstrating that microbial life and geography play a role in modulating the human immune system. A flurry of research has emerged in response to the hygiene hypothesis since 1989, much of which has dispelled its initial assumptions, and made space for a diverse range of interacting variables. By tracing the evolution of these theories, we can start to make sense of how scientific understanding is transforming to recognise the significance of both social and environmental conditions and the timing of exposure in different ways. The growth of this field has progressively undermined mechanist ideas of the body and the naïve idealism of a machine for living in. Some of the key developments include improved knowledge of the immune system and particularly T2 ‘helper’ cells (ironically the immune cells most highly correlated with allergies), and an increased interest in and knowledge of the human microbiome and the variables that influence its composition. For example, it is now understood that the age at which human intestines are colonised with particular microbes—a key factor in allergy development—differs between countries (Bach 2002). Similarly, it has been observed that a high prevalence of certain parasitic infections in some parts of the world is correlated with the absence of allergic and autoimmune disorders (Gale 2002). These types of epidemiological observations led to two further theories being developed that implicate the microbial ecologies we reside in to an even greater degree than the hygiene hypothesis suggests, these are the ‘old friends hypothesis’ and the ‘biodiversity hypothesis’. The old friends hypothesis was proposed by Rook and colleagues in 2003 and is based on the idea that specific microorganisms which have co-evolved with humans ‘train’ the immune system to correctly recognise antigens that will attack the body, and leave everything else alone. Like any good friends, they teach us what we should be sensitive to and what we should avoid in the world. These microbes are thought to have been with us throughout primate evolution and hunter-gatherer

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societies, which are thought to be the key periods of immune system evolution (Rook, Martinelli, and Brunet 2003). An important point of difference between the old friends and hygiene hypotheses is that the former does not suggest that exposing oneself to all kinds of ‘crowd infections’ such as colds, measles and other childhood infections plays an important role in protection from allergies. Rather, these old friends are thought to reside in more ‘natural’ environments, on plants and the bodies of certain animals. Multiple studies have shown that being exposed to natural and farm environments in the first 2–3 years of life protects against allergies (Bloomfield et al. 2016). Given that many urban dwellers do not have access to natural or farm environments this may seem like we are in serious trouble, but thankfully, a few lifelines have been found. The first is to increase the plant biodiversity of urban areas, which I will discuss in more detail later in the chapter. Another is dogs (Fall et al. 2015). Children raised with dogs have been found to be up to half as likely to develop allergies than those that do not; it seems quite fitting that humanity’s old friends accompany its best friends (Perzanowski et al. 2002). However, addressing early life exposure is unlikely to be a matter of isolating single microbes and exposing individuals, as the ecologies that contain the old friends tend to also be very biodiverse—even dogs are like a travelling Amazonian jungle of species—suggesting that microbial biodiversity is likely to be central to these benefits. One of the most broadly accepted hypotheses now is the ‘biodiversity hypothesis’ (Haahtela et al. 2013, Von Hertzen, Hanski, and Haahtela 2011). This theory does not contradict the notion that the old friends we have co-evolved with are important agents of bodily immunity education, but that there is likely to be more than a linear cause and effect (exposure to species equals protection from allergies) relationship at play. The biodiversity hypothesis proposes that a lack of exposure to biodiversity in outdoor natural landscapes, including environmental microbiota, results in inadequate stimulation of important immunoregulatory circuits. This is because interactions with biodiverse environments may have an influence on the composition of the human microbiome— in particular the skin and guts—to favour microbes that are better at stimulating immune regulatory processes.

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In one of the first studies demonstrating the relationship between biodiversity and allergies Hanski and colleagues (2012) found a connection between higher concentrations of Proteobacteria, a greater diversity of the class Gammaproteobacteria, and particularly the genus Acinetobacter, on the skin, which are associated with increased immune tolerance. This study used DNA sequencing to compare the composition and diversity of the skin microbiome and allergic disposition of adolescents that live with different degrees of biodiverse forest and agricultural land within a 3 km radius from their homes. They found that greater proximity to biodiverse ecologies correlated with higher concentrations of these microorganisms on the skin. These findings suggest that land use and the environmental context surrounding a dwelling influences the human microbiome and allergic outcomes. Further research has since been conducted that supports the hypothesis that reduced contact with natural, biodiverse environments may adversely affect the human microbiome and immune function (Hanski et al. 2012). These studies have demonstrated that biodiverse exposures not only affect the skin microbiome but the microbial colonisation of children’s lungs and gastrointestinal tracts (Stamper et al. 2016; Fyhrquist et al. 2014). Some of the most compelling research to support the biodiversity hypothesis can be found in places that are similar in many respects, but differ in some crucial variables, much like studies conducted on human twins. For example, research by Hanski and colleagues, including that described above, was conducted in the Finnish/Russian joint region of Karelia, a place that was previously united within Finland, but has been divided between the two countries since the Second World War and consequently experienced very different development trajectories. There are also other comparative examples that demonstrate the positive correlation between biodiversity and low allergy rates, including between western and eastern Germany (Krämer et al. 2002), and between the Amish and Hutterite communities in North America (Ober et al. 2017). In the case of the latter, the communities share close genetic heritage, practice agriculture and shun most forms of technology, yet the Hutterite have introduced industrial agricultural methods which have reduced their exposure to diverse microbes. In all of these examples, individuals

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who grew up in the more biodiverse, less industrialised landscapes had lower rates of allergies. While genes do modulate sensitivity to these environmental factors, ecological setting has emerged as the dominant variable. Aside from correlations between wealth, industrialisation and inflammatory diseases, studies have also found that rates often increase in migrant populations moving from less to more developed countries. For example, rates of Type 1 diabetes among the children of Pakistani migrants to the UK are the same as non-immigrants—11.7 per 100,000 (Bodansky et al. 1992). This figure is 10 times higher than the incidence of Type 1 diabetes in Pakistan (Staines et al. 1997). The companionship of old friends is not only beneficial for immune responses that influence the development of allergies and autoimmune disease, but also potentially mental health (Stamper et al. 2016). Evidence strongly supports the important influence of the human microbiome on cognitive function (Lyte and Cryan 2014) and emotional behavior (Bravo et al. 2011) and the association between inflammatory diseases and mental health issues, including neuropsychiatric disease (Raison, Lowry, and Rook 2010). Conversely, and without suggesting any kind of microbiological determinism, the presence of specific groups of old friends has been shown to improve cognitive function and decrease anxiety-related behaviours (Lowry et al. 2016). These findings undermine not only the view of human bodies as discreet packages of unfolding genes, but the demarcation that has traditionally been erected between biophysical and emotional health.

Discovering the Vast Indoors This body of research into the types of environmental microbiota that train the human immune systems’ peacekeeping pathways and other bodily functions expanded alongside research into the microbiomes of the built environment. The interest in and expansion of these fields were mutually supportive, and both were dependent on ground-breaking developments in the way microorganisms can be found and identified. Culture-independent genetic sequencing methods have provided one of

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the greatest leaps forward in terms of enabling understanding of the diversity and character of microbial life and their role in our bodies. Prior to the development of these methods, what was known about life indoors (and everywhere else), was constrained by what could be grown in a Petri dish. This was a significant barrier to research, as less than 1% of species of bacteria and archaea can be grown in the lab, and as a result, the majority have been unstudiable for most of the history of microbiology (Stephens 2016). It was not until microbial ecologies were able to be studied in situ through DNA sequencing, rather than isolating single organisms and growing them in a lab, that microbes begun to be understood as complex, ecologically sensitive organisms. Prior to this, it was assumed that microbes were static single-celled individuals from which pure cultures can be developed, and that tightly controlled uniform environments were necessary to study them, despite being artificial. O’Malley and Dupre (2007), claim that these assumptions skewed microbiology and the characterisation of microbial life until research into how bacteria act and interact in a variety of non-laboratory environments began to gain traction in the last few decades. Microbial DNA sequencing techniques have been available since the mid-1970s (Sanger and Coulson 1975). In particular, researchers found in the late 1970s that the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene, could be used as a marker gene in all bacteria and archaea, allowing them to be differentiated (Fox et al. 1977). However, it was not until the early 1980s that a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was developed by American biochemist Kary Mullis that studying the DNA of microbes became practical. The PCR process involves making millions or even billions of copies of a specific sample of DNA, and then amplifying a small sample to a point where it is large enough to accurately study in detail. To read, or sequence, DNA it must first be copied, which involves pulling apart the two strands of DNA, and using an enzyme called polymerase to copy it. The PCR process was initially complicated by the fact that temperatures required to pull apart the DNA would also routinely destroy the polymerase. This limitation made the process long, difficult and expensive and meant that research often still remained confined to microbial species that could be easily cultured.

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The PCR process, and consequently the study of the microbial world, was transformed a few years later when the polymerase from an extremophile bacterium called Thermus aquaticus started to be used. As Dunn (2018) notes in his retelling of the history of indoor microbiology, the story of Thermus aquaticus was both a crucial catalyst for a new scientific fascination with and expansion of research into indoor microbial life, and the development of DNA testing methods used globally today. In the late 1960s Thermus aquaticus was discovered by Thomas Brock and—in a wonderful irony—Hudson Freeze, living in volcanic geysers in Yellowstone National Park in the US at temperatures above 80 °C (Brock and Freeze 1969). In an unusual move for the time, Brock and one of his students begun investigating whether the species could be found in hot water sources in the built environment. They discovered the species living in domestic and laundry hot water systems around Madison, Wisconsin near their university. This extraordinary discovery gave the first insights into the indoor environment as a unique and diverse microbial ecology, reflecting the multiplicity of the world’s ecologies writ small. The second great contribution of Thermus aquaticus was rapid PCR. As noted above, PCR was a long and difficult process in which the polymerase was continuously destroyed by the high temperatures required to split DNA apart. Thermus aquaticus produces a polymerase (named Taq) that is not only accustomed to, but prefers working at extremely high temperatures. The discovery that Taq could be used to rapidly copy DNA without destroying the enzyme led to the acceleration and expansion of research using PCR from the mid-1980s. These developments in scientific practice enabled an expansion of the conception of microbes beyond pathogenic entities to diverse and wild ecosystems with which we share our dwellings. While the discovery of greater microbial diversity through DNA sequencing was a significant step forward in understanding our microbial companions, it was not until scientists developed an interest in, and a means to assess, situated microbial ecologies that prior assumptions about pathogenicity and the unassailability species integrity began to be challenged. In the 1990s molecular rRNA-based microbial ecology, better known as metagenomics, was introduced. This transition involved a shift from the analysis of DNA harvested from in vitro isolated pure

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cultures in the lab, to DNA extracted directly from a sample derived from an environment of interest. This method of sampling enabled researchers to investigate how microbes interact with each other in real ecologies, rather than in settings isolated from the context in which they would ordinarily grow. This shift allowed multiple aspects of microbial communities to be studied including taxonomic composition, functional metagenomics and the potential biological tasks carried out by the entire microbial community. Importantly, it suggested that function and action were not necessarily essential properties of specific organisms but formed in response to the interactive processes they were participating in. Around a decade later, in 2005, a number of new methods came together to create high throughput or ‘next-generation’ sequencing (Metzker 2005). These technologies are usually characterised by their capacity to sequence an entire genome at once, generally by fragmenting it into small pieces, randomly sampling, and then sequencing the sample. The process of sequencing an entire genome is now possible because multiple fragments are sequenced at once in an automated process known as ‘massively parallel’ sequencing. These advances in genetic sequencing, and metagenomics in particular, have meant that many of the organisms living closest to us can be more readily studied. These developments flipped prior assumptions about microbial absence in indoor environments, upon which notions of purity were based and could be maintained, and led to a cascade of research into the indoors uncovering numerous unknown species and a greater understanding of ecological interactivity. The first forays into ‘the great indoors’ started to uncover communities of microbes that were unique to the specific assemblages of materials and spaces of twentieth century design. Around 2004 the first sequencebased survey of bacterial communities in an indoor environment looked at the bacterial biofilms in the soap scum film on vinyl shower curtains in houses (Kelley et al. 2004). They found microbial communities that were surprisingly complex and different to any of the previously collected genetic sequences in reference databases. Hundreds of studies since have identified associations, patterns and drivers of microbial community structures in numerous niches within buildings, including the unique habitats created in schools (Cavaleiro Rufo et al. 2017), hospitals (Smith

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et al. 2013; Holst et al. 2016), university buildings (Haleem, Hassan, and Al-Hiyaly 2013, Meadow et al. 2014), childcare facilities, offices and homes (Fall et al. 2015; Stein et al. 2016) in addition to mass surveys of micro-habitats, such as showerheads. To give one illustrative example of the diversity encountered, a survey of homes across the US revealed, on average, approximately 7000 different types of bacteria and 2000 types of fungi per house just in the dust on the upper trim of an inside door (Adams et al. 2016). By excluding micro-ecological interactions from the concerns materialised in modern techno-capsules, microbial evolution has been inadvertently driven in some bizarre directions. Many of the types of microbial communities that have been found in indoor spaces are unlike any we have cohabited with before. Like extremophiles—species that only live in extreme conditions—such as Thermus aquaticus, there are many species that only live in some of the most extreme environments on earth, and in your standard bathroom. All organisms have both a fundamental niche, designating where it could live, and a realised niche, designating where it does live. Generally, extremophiles have only a very narrow fundamental niche. However, indoor spaces have expanded the possible ecological range of these species. At the same time, indoor environments are driving microbial evolution in unprecedented directions and producing species that can only thrive in these new, indoor ecologies.

The Atmospheres and Materials of Late Twentieth Century Indoor Ecologies There are many developments that occurred in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that have redirected material flows and created the internationally prolific forms of modern urban ecologies we see today. Within the emerging field of Microbiology of the Built Environment, researchers have found that the materials used to construct buildings, their spatial configuration, the way they are ventilated, their temperature and humidity, what is used to clean them and the number and practices of occupants, all influence the microbial ecologies that become established in each indoor enclosure. In particular, research in this field

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has been able to demonstrate how the technological innovations of the modernists in construction and climatic management, have contributed to a significant shift in the types of microbial communities that thrive within indoor spaces (Fahimipour et al. 2018; Green 2014; Weschler 2009). In this section, I focus on two key developments in the history of modern urban indoor environments: climate control and modern building materials. These cases are not intended to suggest a universal or monolithic progression towards the ideas or realities they encapsulate, as there are evidently countless places where these developments have been rejected, reappropriated or followed another trajectory all together. Rather, they are presented as central advancements in the story of the development of the techno-capsules that the global middle classes are migrating into. The introduction of novel synthetic chemicals in both building materials and the products used to maintain interior environments are also a crucial part of this story, and will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter.

Climate Control In the preceding chapter I discussed the influence of the modernist imperative to control and reshape the natural environment to fit the needs of the hygienic body. The development of climate control can be seen as the ultimate realisation of this trajectory. The normalisation of air-conditioning led to a rapid blanketing of the Earth’s surface in climatically stabilised indoor ecologies. Where it began in the US, 13% of houses had air-conditioning by 1960, today it is closer to 90%. In China the number of homes with air-conditioning tripled between 1997 and 2007, with approximately 20 million units sold annually (Cox 2010). Today, more than 150 billion square metres of the Earth are covered in air-conditioned structures (Zalasiewicz et al. 2017). The historical development of air-conditioning was one of the most formative influences in late twentieth and twenty-first architecture and interior and spatial design. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the precursor to the modern air-conditioner is thought to have been unintentionally developed in an effort to take the moisture out of the air

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at the Sackett and Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company in New York (Cowan 1978). Humidity was warping the paper and stopping the inks from setting correctly, so engineer Willis Carrier developed a system to pump air over metal coils to reduce humidity. A side effect of this was air-cooling. Despite first appearing in the early twentieth century, the first air-conditioning technology was too expensive for anyone but the very wealthy, or businesses such as theatres, department stores and transport companies that could justify the cost due to the extra customers cool air would attract (Otter 2017). However, by the 1940s air-conditioning systems that could fit in the window of an apartment were beginning to be mass marketed.Please check the sentence “Despite first appearing … would attract” for clarity.amended From the outset, the aim of climate control was not to mimic the conditions of the outside world; it was to improve upon, precisely attune, and standardise the interior atmosphere to perfectly suit the temperature, humidity, auditory, olfactory and lighting needs of the productive, healthy body. As the technology became more advanced its promise became the subject of speculative, perfectly controlled utopias throughout the mid-twentieth century. These visions were often framed around the mastery of sealed, engineered micro-worlds that would enable the colonisation of new extreme frontiers such as Mars or the Arctic. This vision of progress that volleyed between science fiction and modernist architecture was epitomised in dome or ‘bubble’ constructions. In 1942 illustrator Frank Paul envisaged an enormous enclosed dome city on one of Jupitar’s Moons made entirely of “transparent and opaque plastics”, while Arthur C. Clarke’s domed city of Diaspar in The City and the Stars (1956) inspired architects Frei Otto, Kenzo Tange and Ewald Bubner to design a 2 km dome city for the Arctic Circle (Squire, Adey, and Jensen 2018). Perhaps most famously, in 1960 the architect Buckminster Fuller proposed an atmospherically controlled geodesic dome that covered the whole of Manhattan; enclosing the entire city into one perfectly controlled indoor space. The bubble phenomenon was not constrained to macro-landscapes, but provided an adaptable metaphor for multiple instantiations of the new fascination with total environmental control. Inspired by emerging military and aerospace bubbles, such as space helmets and plexiglass aeroplane cockpits, and growing awareness of environmental crisis, bubbles

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began to enter the popular imagination in the post-war period. In the 1960s you could find televisions, chairs, ashtrays, house extensions and unnumerable art installations in the form of bubbles, such as photographer Melvin Sokolsky’s iconic images of models floating down the Seine in bubbles. The imaginative potential of ‘bubbletecture’ or ‘inflatoecture’ more broadly was explored by counter cultural groups such as the San Francisco collective Ant Farm, who while heavily influenced by Buckminster Fuller, also saw its potential to create more participatory forms of architecture (Moon 2014). The light, transportable and accessible nature of inflatable structures gelled with their ideals of communal, nomadic living. While grandiose illusions about the capacity to control entire landscapes within atmospherically perfected bubbles were eventually relegated to science fiction1 (although some architectural commentators have pointed to a kind of COVID-era resurgence in protective bubbletecture [Heathcote 2020]), the adoption of air-conditioning as a standard feature of dwellings and other buildings has enabled the urban colonisation of sparsely populated areas with extreme weather conditions. For example, in the US, air-conditioning allowed the population of hot parts of the country to expand enormously, particularly to the areas of Arizona and Florida known as the ‘sun belt’. Some claim this shift was so great that Regan’s electoral success can be attributed to the movement of thermally motivated conservatives (Cox 2010). The evolution of air-conditioning is closely tied to the evolution of the idea of comfort as an attribute of a space or experience. The notion of comfort as being satisfied with one’s body in relation to its environment is thought to have first appeared around the seventeenth century in Europe and the US (Crowley 2003). The capacity to mechanically control the indoor climate offered for the first time an opportunity to reflect on and create environmental conditions that represent a comfortable ideal. This promise initiated an industry and a ‘science of comfort’ in which engineers and physiologists attempted to create and standardise the perfect thermal conditions for the human body. In some of the most influential laboratory experiments, Ole Fanger undertook extensive programmes research to identify the ‘quantitative conditions’ required to obtain ‘optimal thermal comfort’ (Ole Fanger

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1970). In line with the universalising, mechanist conceptions of the human body espoused by the modernists, a specially controlled climate chamber was built to simulate different conditions and record the responses of the predominantly young, white, male respondents. In addition to measuring the temperature of the skin, participants were asked how comfortable they felt at different points in a questionnaire using a seven-point scale from hot to warm, slightly warm, neutral, slightly cool, cool and cold (Cowan 1978). The experiments were also intended to quantify the relative importance of other factors including radiant temperature, air velocity, metabolic rate, clothing, air temperature and humidity. Fanger used this research to develop a general equation which he claimed could calculate all combinations of these factors under different activity levels to achieve optimal thermal comfort. The goal of creating a perfect universal climatic condition was an expression of the mechanistic understanding bodies and buildings as machines that could be reduced to their component parts. Like the Glass Man of Dresden, the ventilation engineers considered the body to be a machine with optimal operating conditions that were scientifically discoverable. This corresponds to Le Corbusier’s ‘respiration exact’: the assertion that the perfect operating environment for the human machine was 18 ºC (Banham 1984). The field of ventilation engineering proposed that machines were the only reliable way to deliver good, comfortable air with precision. The ecological processes that were perpetually making and transforming bodies, their biology and their preferences, were not perceptible in this mechanist framework. The science of comfort was not, however, a purely scientific endeavour. Nigel Oseland reports in an extensive review of the history of the industry that knowledge produced via these scientific experiments legitimises air-conditioning in a way that corresponded to the needs of the emerging climate control industry (Oseland and Humphreys 1994). Many of the most influential studies into thermal comfort were conducted by the American Society for Heating and Ventilation Engineers’ (ASHVE) made up of members from air-conditioning businesses in collaboration with professors from Harvard and Yale and their laboratory resources (Murphy 2006). Comfort research centred on the agendas of those who specify and manufacture the required equipment. By

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assuming that air-conditioning will be the solution to whatever problems or optimal conditions are revealed through the research, the types of information required to make other forms of atmospheric regulation more effective, such as passive design, were not valued or sought (Oseland and Humphreys 1994). In addition to inhibiting research into non-mechanical climatic control measures, there were other consequences of this focus on developing mechanical air-conditioning. The quest to specify the perfect universal climatic conditions meant that all natural environments were rendered imperfect due to their variability. The implication was that all environments occupied by humans became potential markets for air-conditioning (Cooper 2002). Another consequence was the standardisation of how the properties of air were considered and valued. As the researchers only measured comfort in terms of the attributes of air their companies already manufactured, including temperature, humidity and airflow, other qualities of air, such as its molecular ecological composition, remained unmeasured and were therefore not reflected in the air design practices of modern ventilation engineering (Murphy 2006; Oseland and Humphreys 1994). This way of specifying the important properties of air contrasts with the late nineteenth and early twentieth century concerns of the sanitarian movement discussed in the previous chapter, which was interested primarily in its ‘fresh’ and ‘clean’ properties. The sanitarians held that ventilation and water were the primary means by which foul air, miasmas and disease from dirty urban streets should be carried away from interior environments. The function and qualities of air emphasised by ventilation experts at that time were consequently freshness and healthfulness. As germ theory came to saturate public consciousness and state health strategies, these attributes of air receded as a primary indicator of health.2 From the 1920s, and particularly through the interwar years, the rise of electricity also meant that indoor air in places such as offices and homes became far less polluted with smoke, freeing air to be considered in relation to new properties. As heating improved in European cities in the nineteenth century, the by-product was persistent smoke from thousands of indoor coal fires, in addition to industrial fumes (Otter 2016). The introduction of electricity into homes displaced pollution

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away from the air of those creating it. The obsession of early twentieth century modernists with glass—perfectly demonstrating structural ingenuity while allowing the healthful properties of light into buildings—in the context of a growing excitement around the affordances of electricity, paved the way for the mass adoption of air-conditioning. Inspired by the Crystal Palace constructed for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, innovation in the use of glass in buildings accelerated for the next half century. Most significantly, for interior environments, architects such as Gropius and Mies van der Rohe of the Bauhaus school focused on developing cascading walls of glass that were able to extend unbroken for multiple stories. Glass allowed Mies to demonstrate the ingenuity of light structural frames and, perhaps most importantly, allowed the perfect articulation of the modernist dictum that ‘less is more’ (Cowan 1978). These architectural, technological and atmospheric shifts made way for new attributes of air to be specified and marketed. The standards for thermal comfort that emerged from the laboratory tests from the 1920s, and particularly in the 1960s, have been enshrined in internationally recognised standards, such as ‘American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE)3 Standard 55, that guide building design around the world (Murphy 2006). The definitions of thermal comfort materialised in the buildings that follow these standards have established, standardised and reinforced normative expectations of what comfort is (Shove 2003). While meeting ASHRAE standards is not legally required for the development of multistory buildings such as offices and residential apartments, engineers and designers are generally unwilling not to conform to them because it is what the market has come to expect. Given these specific standards of thermal comfort are only achievable via mechanical systems, it has become uncommon to see new buildings in industrialised urban areas without air-conditioning systems factored into the design, irrespective of climatic variation. Some go as far as to suggest that the existence of definable standards for mechanically conditioned buildings has probably been the key cause for its mass adoption (Cowan 1978). While there are evidently specific thermal conditions required by human bodies to survive, the efforts of the ventilation industry of the early twentieth century produced expectations of thermal comfort

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that did not previously exist. There is some research that suggests the thermal conditions that one becomes accustomed to from a young age conditions the body to expect and be comfortable within different temperature ranges. Like other biosocial training that occurs in modern indoor environments, living at constant temperatures trains bodies to be less able to tolerate temperate fluctuations, while those who are still regularly subjected to the elements, like farmers, often suffer less from temperature variability (Shove 2003). A number of studies in the late twentieth century sought to understand the various thermal conditions under which different groups of people were comfortable. These studies indicated a far greater diversity of tolerance and preference than the ventilation engineering research suggested. For example, Nicol (1999) found that Pakistani workers reported being comfortable at temperatures of 31 ºC, while people accustomed to Antarctic conditions reported being comfortable in indoor environments of around 6 ºC (Goldsmith 1960). Humidity is also a factor, as surveys of Singaporean residents of European and Asian descent suggested they were happy with an indoor climate of 27 ºC and a relative humidity of 80%, although this tolerance may have shifted with increased penetration of air-conditioning since the results were published in the 1970s (Cowan 1978). Elizabeth Shove argues that these expectations have not only continued to be standardised in the places that have been subject to their forces, but that they have been increasingly ‘ratcheted up’. She highlights that Swedish office employees, who have experienced widespread climate control for a number of years, do not expect the office climate to change more than half a degree, while by contrast, Portuguese office employees have been subject to less consistent climatic control measures and are content with a range of variability closer to 5 ºC (Stoops 2001). In ‘discovering’ what people ‘need’, the science of comfort led to the production of buildings and systems that also create expectations of comfort. In addition to altering corporeal expectations, other systems have co-evolved with air-conditioning that would not function as expected without it. The 9 am to 5 pm working day would not be possible in many places without access to the comfortable midday climatic conditions afforded by air-conditioners. Similarly, modern fashion has become

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less tethered to fabrics that are breathable or warm because thermal properties are no longer a primary criterion by which many types of clothing are selected (Shove 2003). The shift to air-conditioned office spaces saw a move away from tweed, wool and cotton to garments that could be manufactured more cheaply from synthetic fabrics. While thermal properties did not become redundant, this shift somewhat liberated clothing to be designed with more diverse aesthetic qualities in mind. Societies have reorganised around the desire and ability to create and control indoor conditions. The standardisation of building designs that require air-conditioning has thus condemned occupants to rely on it and their bodies to require it. Like clothing, in the time prior to the mass adoption of airconditioning vernacular architectural styles reflected climatic conditions (Cowan 1978). In the tropics, buildings were commonly built with materials such as timber, bamboo and reeds and had features such as curving gables that allowed for easy airflow through the buildings. In hot dry areas of the Americas, buildings were commonly built with mudbrick and adobe to provide insulation from the heat and lock in the cool from the night. Islamic architecture also often features strategically placed balconies and rooms to allow for cool airflow and the placement of pools of water to increase humidity and reduce temperatures (Ghasemi 2015). Other common features that evolved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in hot areas, particularly in North America and British colonies such as India and Australia, included verandas and overhanging rooves built from timber or brick (Banham 1984). Even high-density urban architecture was previously guided by climatic conditions. In hot locations office buildings commonly had high ceilings and well placed windows to allow for airflow. They were also often much narrower than current multistorey dwellings to maximise exposure to the breeze. The introduction of air-conditioning not only altered airflow, humidity and temperature, but brought about more significant changes in building configuration and materials. As it was perceived that the structural features intended to cool buildings were no longer required architects began to experiment more with building exteriors, and particularly the affordances of light steel structural frames and glass. This shift aligned with the preference in modernist aesthetics for sleek lines, glass,

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light and minimal ornamentation. As noted previously, modernist architects from the 1920s, and particularly those in the International Style like Mies van der Rohe, revered glass for its light affording properties and sleek, streamlined ‘infinity’ aesthetic. This resulted in the glass curtain walls that started appearing commonly in the skyscrapers of the 1940s and 1950s, demonstrating the ingenuity of plate glass that could extend from floor to ceiling without interruption. These towers laid a globally influential template, despite its flaws being evident from the outset. In Cowan’s (1978, 220) words ‘the new glass-walled towers… aroused hostility and inspired emulation, and there are few countries today without buildings with glass curtain walls supported by light structural frames and few without critics of such buildings’. Indeed, it became immediately clear that buildings encased in glass were uninhabitable in summer. Mies van der Rohe was famously taken to court by his client Dr. Farnsworth for creating a house that was so hot it was unfit for human habitation, due largely to the abundant glass. While some architects, such as Le Courbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, learned from early mistakes and began to modify their designs to allow for shade affording features, others persisted along the glass box trajectory spurred by the promise that air-conditioning would resolve all issues of the interior climate. Another notable transition occurred between the 1950s and 1960s that saw increased attention to the interior conditions and climate and buildings more broadly. In the 1940s and 1950s architectural attention was directed to experimentation with new structural forms enabled by new materials and techniques, however, by the 1960s there was a sense that the limits of structural innovation may be reached and an appetite for new criteria against which to measure innovation and quality began to be sought. Attention shifted to the interior atmosphere and the creation of the perfect interior environment became the new mark of quality (Cowan 1978). Insulation—derived from insul¯aris, the Latin word for island—and the tightening of buildings were central to this transition. In particular, increasing costs of heating and cooling drove the tightening of buildings to prevent air loss, especially through the energy crisis of the 1970s. It is here that the expertise and instrumentation of the ‘science of comfort’ began to issue in a new era of mechanised,

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standardised indoor climates, and buildings designed to accommodate them. With the growth of the air-conditioning industry, effort was directed towards creating a continuity of experience between distributed locations. From the mid-twentieth century multiple different types of spaces have consequently become climatically controlled, from homes to cars, offices, shopping malls and cinemas. In 1956 the world’s first enclosed shopping mall, Southdale Shopping Centre in Minnesota, was designed to replicate a European high street under indoor conditions optimised for comfort (Otter 2017). Konya and Scott (2014) describe the conditions produced by mass air-conditioning from the mid-twentieth century as ‘tropical islands’ scattered across a variable landscape. As noted in the Introduction, Sloterdijk similarly described modern atmospherically engineered indoor spaces as ‘Anthropogenic islands’. The focus of technological innovation in the science of climatic comfort indoors, while ecological interaction at the micro-scale remained largely imperceptible, allowed for exceptional new ecologies to emerge almost entirely under the radar.

New Climates as Drivers of Indoor Evolution Air-conditioning, the sealing of the building envelope and the connection between climatically controlled indoor islands have been profound forces in the evolution of indoor ecologies. A good example is the German cockroach: the poster species for survival under adversity. While probably untrue, it is a truism that they would be one of the only surviving animals of a nuclear apocalypse. However, German cockroaches are actually highly dependent on networked, climate-controlled atmospheres for their survival (Dunn 2018). In the wild, German cockroaches starve or are eaten, if they even make it to adulthood. There are consequently no known wild populations of German cockroaches. They like the same atmospheric environment and foods as us and are exceptionally effective at reproducing under these conditions. It is likely these traits that give them the sense of a plague infesting our homes.

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Although it is likely that German Cockroaches have been annoying and evolving with Europeans indoors since at least the mid-eighteenth century,4 the proliferation and interconnection of climate-controlled indoor islands has seen the spread of German cockroaches to urbanised areas around the world. Until recently, the species was not common in a large part of China. However, the introduction of climate-controlled trucks—warmed in the north and cooled in south—and a greater uptake of domestic air-conditioning with rising wealth in the population, has seen the spread of the insects into air-conditioned apartments and other spaces throughout the country (Tang et al. 2016; Dunn 2018). The impacts of these common indoor companions on human health are significant, but perhaps different to what their stigma suggests. It is a common myth that cockroaches spread disease, yet there are no recorded cases of people catching infectious diseases from them (Dunn 2018). They are, however, one of the most common indoor allergens. As with many indoor environmental health issues, the relative capacity to be affected by allergens and protect oneself from them reflects existing inequalities. Research has shown, for example, that cockroaches are a major allergen trigger for asthma among African Americans in the US living in poverty (Rosenstreich et al. 1997). In a US national study of asthma prevalence and disparities published in 2015, the key risk factors identified were poverty, and being Black or Puerto Rican (Keet et al. 2015). Similarly, a recent study into asthma in urban Aboriginal children in Australia found that asthma prevalence declined as household income increased (Skinner et al. 2020). Socio-economic status, and related factors including ethnicity, are key determinants of not only the types of pathogens or allergenic triggers that are in a dwelling, but how the body is trained to respond to them through its history of environmental exposures. In addition to cockroaches, other allergens have also been influenced by the way the indoor climate is controlled. For example, one study in the US found that houses with air-conditioning tended to be more likely to have Cladosporium and Penicillium fungi, which reside in airconditioning units and distribute themselves through buildings when the air-conditioning is turned on. Dust mites are also a particularly important player in our changing ecologies and immune systems. I

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commented earlier on the sharp increase in asthma since the 1960s, reaching epidemic proportions in some places. In the early 1960s studies were initiated that examined the potential causes of the increases that were beginning to be observed. One study conducted on school children in Birmingham in the UK demonstrated not only a great increase in asthma between 1958 and 1968 (Smith et al. 1969) but that many of the affected children showed positive skin tests to dust mites. In the subsequent years the increasing prevalence of asthma was strongest in countries in which dust mites were the most common allergen, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (Smith et al. 1969; Clarke and Aldons 1979; Miyamoto et al. 1974). These countries had also experienced a tightening of the indoor environment, increased use of air-conditioning and liked using carpets—the perfect conditions for dust mites to thrive. By the mid-1990s it was clear the rise in asthma was directly related to changes in indoor ecologies and the dominance of new allergens. The role of airflow in cooling has also had a significant influence on the microbiomes of dwellings, and other buildings such as schools, offices and hospitals. Air carries in microbes from the outside environment and changes the conditions for microbes dwelling inside. The tightening of buildings has also meant that fewer outdoor species can enter. Dwellings that are well ventilated and surrounded by a biodiverse environment have a much greater biological diversity indoors than sealed buildings which are filled with microbes related to the shedding of our bodies, the breakdown of our food, the building interior itself and the extreme environments of heaters, coolers and other emerging niches. If the biodiversity hypothesis is true, this sealing of the building could have significant implications for the immunological development of occupants.

New Materials, Spaces and Indoor Environmental Decline In addition to the way the indoor climate is controlled, the materials with which the building, interior and domestic objects are made, the ecologies

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they were formed within and how they are used, all significantly influence indoor ecological dynamics. The examples presented in this section of showerheads and plasterboard—these may seem obscure, but stay with me—demonstrate the value of considering objects and buildings as stages in evolving interactive processes. Indoor spaces are not only climatically but materially distinct from all prior human dwelling environments. While the futurist Victor Cohn’s (1956, 42) prediction that in 1999 houses ‘…may be built out of lowcost, light-weight plastic bricks – square balloons really, hollow inside and inflated with air’, did not entirely come to fruition, novel materials have transformed our dwellings. Traditional human constructions and technological networks were composed of wood, stone and iron, while newer structures and technological systems utilise a wide range of materials, including synthetic substances and rare metals (Otter 2017). Many of these novel materials are used specifically to enable technologies such as batteries, electronic wiring and microchips that have become essential for modern buildings to function. The capacity to mechanically control the interior climate of buildings also helped enable the rise of mass-produced homes made from cheap materials. The proliferation of new materials, and especially plastics, also made a range of new products and dwelling practices possible, and eventually indispensable, to multiple aspects of normal urban lifestyles. The use of these new materials with minimal regard for their ecological ramifications can be seen as symptomatic of the ecologically indifferent notion of progress associated with modernist thought. Like other types of modifications, this profusion of new materials in our living environments is predicated on an understanding of the environment as something that does not affect bodies unless infiltrated by germs or other contaminants. A reliance on abstractions based on notions of purity and contaminating substances underpin the largely unmitigated entry of new materials into our living environments. The cumulative effects of exposure to these new materials cannot, in most cases, be adequately accounted for using categorisation systems that assign fixed identities and attributes to chemical compounds and microbes. These categorisation practices will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter. In this section, I

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will detail some of the ways that the introduction of new building materials have restructured the processes that connect bodies to dwellings, with a range of unintended outcomes. As noted above, to illustrate the necessity of examining building materials as emergent products of many processes I will focus primarily on two examples: showerheads and plasterboard.

Showerheads All surfaces function as a physical substrate for microbial life, but it is the specific chemical composition of the material that provides a food source which then selects for different species and populations. For example, cellulose-based surface materials like wood often stimulate microbial growth more rapidly than inorganic materials like concrete (Gilbert and Stephens 2018). The acidity of the material is also an important selector, as many microbes prefer a neutral pH. The porosity, roughness and positioning of a material (e.g. walls or floors) and how it is treated and maintained, all shape the dynamics of material colonisation by microbes. For example, if a surface has been physically or chemically disrupted by a fungus it may make it easier for bacteria to access it to grow. Some research has suggested that the way a house is internally differentiated can sometimes be an even more important determinant of the types of microbes that will live there than the materials (Kembel et al. 2012). For example, studies looking at the types of microbial communities that live on floors indoors, the most abundant indoor microbial habitat, have found that those communities are dependent less on the surface material than the location of the room within the house (Adams et al. 2016). Different rooms within a house commonly have an identifiable microbial profile or fingerprint that would allow an investigator to identify what type of space it is (Kembel et al. 2012). The spatial configurations of homes that determine whether your bedroom is near a window, or how close your bathroom is to your kitchen are also all potentially consequential in indoor ecological dynamics and potential pathogen ecologies. I do not mean to suggest that materials do not matter, but emphasise that it is the spatio-temporal-material arrangement

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of process together that come to determine who interacts with what and where. One of the most extraordinary outcomes of processes that make up modern techno-capsules is how bodies have come to interact with species from the genus of bacteria known as mycobacterium. The most notorious member of the genus is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, responsible for the tuberculosis disease that kills one in five adults in Europe and North America between 1600 and 1800 (Wilson 2005), and continues to persist as one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide (Raviglione et al. 2018). Not all species of mycobacterium are pathogenic, many live without negatively affecting humans in diverse wild environments, including soil. However, in recent years there has been a rise in infections associated with ‘nontuberculosis mycobacterium’—those that do not cause tuberculosis—that live in indoor environments, and specifically showerheads. The ways in which these microbes come to enter homes and participate in bodily processes is a result of very specific interactions between water sources, treatment practices and plumbing infrastructures, combined with the shape of showerheads and the materials from which they are made, in addition to the routine practice of daily showering. In a recent survey into the microbiomes of showerheads across the US a number of completely new species of mycobacterium were discovered, some of which are more associated with lung, skin and eye infections; more so than mycobacterium that live in soil and other environments (Gebert et al. 2018). Currently the risk of infection by nontuberculous mycobacteria is only really high for people who are immunocompromised, including those with cystic fibrosis or people whose lungs have an unusual architecture. However, research is suggesting the risk of nontuberculous mycobacteria infections is increasing in the US (Adjemian et al. 2012). There is also nothing to prevent these mycobacterial species from adapting to take advantage of their human hosts, which the genus has been incredibly adept at doing. In a global first, the Showerhead Microbiome Project, led by Noah Fierer at the University of Colorado, sampled showerheads across the US and Europe to see what was living in them. This project found much higher levels of mycobacteria in water that had been treated by chlorine

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and chloramine, and in biofilms on metal showerheads. Mycobacteria were up to twice as common in municipal water than in well water in samples across the US; in some showerheads attached to municipal water 90 per cent of the bacteria were mycobacterium, while showerheads in houses attached to well water often had no mycobacterium (Gebert et al. 2018). Similar patterns were found in Europe. The reason hypothesised for this is that mycobacterial species tend to be very tolerant of the chlorine and chloramine commonly used to treat municipal water, which are unhospitable to many other species. The source of water that flows into homes is one of the greatest determinants of the microbes entering dwellings. From the ancient aquifers in Europe, which contain trillions of diverse and often endemic microbes, to the heavily chemically treated surface water that supplies much of the US, water is not a homogenous ecology (Griebler and Avramov 2015). In addition to the water source, research has found that plastic showerheads generally have fewer mycobacterium than metal ones—likely because there are more bacteria that can metabolise the plastic and outcompete them— and that cleaning a showerhead in bleach can produce a threefold rise in the mycobacterium abundance (Feazel et al. 2009). In other words, the potentially concerning species of nontuberculosis mycobacterium become more common, the more attempts are made to eliminate all life in our water, from municipal to domestic treatment practices. The act of showering is also important in this story. The shift during the mid-twentieth century to showering over bathing across developed countries, and the escalation of norms around personal bathing, has meant that there has been a high level and frequency of interaction between human lungs and species living in showerheads. Nontuberculosis mycobacterium only becomes problematic when they accidentally find their way into human lungs through human breathing in close, damp proximity to the showerhead. As the bacterium is regularly exposed to this new lung niche, it is perhaps apt to be concerned that they could find it beneficial to adapt to life there. The story of mycobacteria in the modern niche of the showerhead is not exclusively about new pathogen ecologies. Some species in this genus are participating in and changing activity in the brain, potentially for the better. The microbiologist Christopher Lowry found that exposure to a

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species called Mycobacterium vaccae increases the production of serotonin in the brains of mice and humans, which is linked to reduction in stress and greater overall happiness (Reber et al. 2016; Lowry et al. 2016). Lowry’s lab is continuing to conduct research using the mycobacteria from showerheads to understand if any other species can do the same. The showerhead microbiome impeccably illustrates how infrastructural, material, biological and human behavioural processes interact at different spatio-temporal scales to produce unique habitats with vast ramifications for human bodies. Similar stories could be told of the changes to food production practices over the twentieth century and the routes by which food now comes to enter homes. Industrial agricultural ecologies have encouraged the growth of new microbial communities in response to pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and the multitude of other inputs that are driving microbial selection in food. Food then often travels vast distances in refrigerated trucks, in containers of plastic or metal, where it engages with other micro material processes. These ecological packages then enter our homes and our bodies and interact with the microbial and metabolic processes of the body, producing a diverse set of largely unknown emergent effects. Heather Paxson (2014), Hannah Landecker (2011) and Chris Otter (2015) all provide compelling insights into the microbial relations that have emerged within industrial food systems over the twentieth century, which are not only interacting with the bodies of consumers in novel ways, but all ecologies involved in food supply chains.

Plasterboard In addition to food and the wilds of the shower, the diverse array of fungal life that feed off dwellings are also shaping the bodies of human occupants. Indoor fungi are common and often pernicious allergens, triggering often severe skin, eye and lung inflammation and exacerbating conditions such as asthma. Each building material—like paperboard, wallpaper, wood, plastic and cement—has its own associated set of

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microbes that like to live in and feed off it. While there are newly discovered fungi, known as ‘technophiles’, that are able to feed off the plastics and metals in common building materials, the most malign groups for human health (that scientists know of ) are generally those associated with organic matter (Baxi et al. 2016). Wood contains numerous fungi that feed off both cellulose and lignin. Some of these species are acquired from the local environment, while others, like Serpula lacrymans, which causes dry rot, have been transported around the world on ships (Kauserud et al. 2012). Cement also contains numerous fungi, many of the sort that are found outside in soil, making it susceptible to degradation over time. While many of these organic materials are those we have built dwellings with for centuries, Rook and Knight (2015) found that when modern structures degrade, become damp or accumulate moisture in wall cavities, they do not become colonised with types of microorganisms that we have co-evolved with. A key reason for this is likely to be the ways in which natural materials such as timber are treated with chemicals and other synthetic additives to building products. The fungal communities that dwell in these substrates are also moulded by the processes that shaped them. Plasterboard (called ‘drywall’ in the US) offers an exemplary case of how the minute changes in the composition of a building material, and the ecological process it is part of, influences occupant health. Plasterboard was first invented in the late nineteenth century as a material for interior walls and ceilings. Originally it was made by layering plaster within four plies of wool felt paper, however, from the early twentieth century gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate) began to be used. Plasterboard is now generally comprised of a layer of gypsum plaster squished between two layers of paper. The raw gypsum is heated to remove moisture then slightly rehydrated to produce the hemihydrate of calcium sulphate. The plaster is then combined with fibres such as paper or fibreglass, in addition to plasticiser, foaming agents, EDTA and numerous additives that decrease moisture and retard fire. While plasterboard was around in the early twentieth century its use accelerated in the post-Second World War baby/housing boom across countries with the means to rapidly develop, such as the US and Australia. Gypsum is less combustible and was much cheaper than other

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interior construction materials such as wood and plaster. It also provides good acoustic and thermal insulation, and is easily able to accommodate additional insulation; affordances that chime with the normative requirements of modern dwellings (Harwell 2010). These properties, plus its capacity to be erected quickly and cheaply, have made plasterboard one of the defining features of rapid urban growth since the mid-twentieth globally. The gypsum used in plasterboard is sourced either from quarries and then ground into a powder, or obtained as a synthetic by-product of environmental control systems (scrubbers) in the smokestacks of coalfired power plants (McKay et al. 2009). The particles captured from coal burning becomes flue-gas desulfurisation (FGD) gypsum. While technically the same product, these two different modes of procuring gypsum is one of the ways that its minute material attributes come to matter. Both types of gypsum release mercury, however some types of FGD gypsum (depending on a number of variables), has been reported to release substantially more mercury into the building and atmosphere around where it is installed (Sanderson 2007; HBN 2020). However, plasterboard has come to be more commonly associated with environmental health hazards linked to their microbial hitchhikers. One notable example is a health epidemic that became known by the crudely racialised moniker ‘chinese drywall’, that emerged in the US in the early 2000s (Allen et al. 2012). This endemic health issue was linked to plasterboard imported from China, and ultimately affected an estimated 100,000 homes in over 20 states. The US manufactures its own plasterboard, however, a surge in demand at this time led to an increase in imports from China. Occupants of homes with the imported plasterboard began reporting problems such as respiratory issues, chronic headaches, sinus issues and bleeding noses. They were also noticing a blackening of indoor metals such as copper, which is indicative of a hydrogen sulphide reaction. Research found that the issues were related to the off-gassing of sulphurous gases, including carbon disulphide, carbonyl sulphide and hydrogen sulphide (Allen et al. 2012). The reason for these gaseous emissions was put down to a higher presence of pyrite in the fly ash added into the Chinese material.

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The differences in chemical composition became important because of the microbes that accompanied them. A study in 2010 found that 100% of the affected plasterboard samples from the US contained Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, a bacterium that oxidises iron and sulphur and produces sulphuric acid, while non-contaminated samples contained minimal levels if any (Hooper et al. 2010). It is this process of bacterial digestion that is crucial to the effects on occupants. Interestingly, plasterboard from the same sources used throughout Asia reputedly did not have the same effects. Reasons reportedly given by Chinese officials were that American homes have less ventilation and are more tightly built (Wayne 2009). This is not the only case where, under the right conditions, plasterboard has been a microbial trojan horse. A number of studies have now revealed that various strains of pathogenic or allergenic fungi are sometimes embedded in plasterboard during manufacturing. Dunn (2018) highlights research led by Danish mycologist Birgitte Andersen (2011) that samples plasterboard from multiple different manufacturers, evidence was found of Neosartorya hiratsukae, a fungus implicated in the range of causes of Parkinson’s disease, in addition to the fungus Chaetomium globosum, an allergen and sometimes pathogen, and the toxic black mould Stachybotrys chartarum (Andersen et al. 2017). Until this research was conducted, the phenomena of black mould and its range of debilitating effects was quite mysterious, as it did not appear to be travelling into homes through the air (Dunn 2018). It wasn’t until researchers thought to consider that it could be impregnated in the core of the building, waiting for a rainy day or burst pipe to start participating in the indoor ecological dance, that it begun to be better understood. It is not yet known exactly how the fungal spores are getting into the plasterboard to begin with, but one theory is that when recycled cardboard is stored for use in plasterboard production, it encourages fungal growth, and the spores survive the subsequent manufacturing process. Importantly, this mould species is not necessarily inherently more toxic than many others, but has become a serious health threat because of the prevalence of indoor environmental conditions where water flows are not adequately mitigated.

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Conclusions The ecological potentialities of plasterboard highlight the poverty of any attempt to reduce the effect that a given material may have on a body to a single, linear cause and effect mechanism. In the case of plasterboard and its embedded fungal communities, it was not only the ecologies of dwellings that influenced how they engaged the bodies of occupants (damp versus dry, sealed versus ventilated) but the ecologies in which these materials were forged. If we were to change the way the materiality of products such as plasterboard are considered to ask not ‘why has something changed’ but ‘what are the factors that produce stability of specific variables and relations’ given the ecological processes through which they have come into being, we may edge closer to a means of understanding and anticipating indoor ecological interactions. This chapter started by exploring how concurrent advances in epidemiology and microbial ecology in the late twentieth century began to paint a picture of a far more complex and systemic association between dwelling and bodies than had previously existed. The presumptions that landscape modifications that reduced biodiversity, and the creation of structures and spaces from new and composite materials, were irrelevant to health are gradually being undermined. The bodily ramifications of such seemingly innocuous things as air-conditioners, showerheads and plasterboard highlight the importance of considering not only the ecological characteristics of the building site, but the ecologies through which the materials have passed in their construction, their ongoing connection to near and distant ecologies through infrastructural networks and the microclimates they create. The diversity of immune responses to the mycobacterium in showerheads and the fungi in plasterboard also underscore the contingency of indoor environmental health on the immunological training of occupant bodies. These examples highlight the inadequacy of generic nouns such as plaster, timber, concrete or plastic in helping us to piece together how an environment may affect the bodies that occupy it. A processual account of indoor health that deals with the intersection of bodily histories, material transformations and openness to situated ecological variables is required to grapple with late modern pathogen ecologies.

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The limitations of a substance ontology for apprehending the ways in which bodies and indoor environments are shaping one another becomes particularly apparent when we start to consider how chemical toxicants have begun to participate in our buildings and bodies over the last century. In the following chapter I traverse a number of examples which illustrate how toxicity and harm associated with these chemical classes can only be adequately understood through an examination of contextualised interactions over time.

Notes 1. Many of these ideas for domed climate bubbles have persisted in recent visions for the colonisation of Mars and in arid, fossil fuel in rich parts of the world. The Al Wasl Dome, constructed for Expo 2020 Dubai, was designed to form a ‘grand “urban room”, a meeting place that creates a shaded microclimate unlike anywhere else’ (GulfNews 2019). There was also an alternative strand to the dome building movement focused on addressing environmental issues, often at a more modest scale and with a greater focus on ecological principles, such as the Eden Project in Cornwall, England and Biosphere 2 in Arizona. 2. Just re-emphasising again that the extent and the ways in which germ theory interacted with prior conceptions of disease was not uniform but differed significantly between countries and regions. 3. Previously the ‘American Society for Heating and Ventilation Engineers’ (ASHVE). 4. The Swedish founder of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, so disliked the species that he named it after the Germanic Prussians, the enemy the Swedes were fighting at the time in the Seven Years War.

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4 The Ecology Makes the Poison: Toxicant Exposure, Antimicrobial Logic and the Biology of History

In the early 1500s the so-called father of toxicology, the German Renaissance physician Paracelsus, proffered that when attempting to determine the toxicity of a substance to a human body ‘What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison’, which is often summarised in the maxim ‘the dose makes the poison’ (Grandjean 2016). He said this in the context of early toxicology practice focused on distinguishing between the therapeutic and toxic properties of chemicals through experimentation. While this maxim holds true for some types of exposures to previously common poisons, such as lead, arsenic, and mercury, the type of linear, consistent and contextually disembedded interaction this implies cannot account for the new types of toxic encounters that have emerged in the twentieth century. Paracelsus’ dictum laid the foundation for what is now referred to as the ‘threshold concept’, and the ‘no-adverse effect level’—indicating the highest tested dose of a substance at which no adverse effect is observed. These concepts underpin modern toxicology. In a 2003 article in Nature, Calabrese and Baldwin argue that the toxicological community made an error in its formative years of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Wakefield-Rann, Life Indoors, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2_4

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1930s and 1940s of historic proportions by accepting the threshold model (Calabrese and Baldwin 2003). This model was accepted as dogma, and enshrined in the regulatory systems designed to protect human and environmental health. It spread from the US to much of the developed world, despite chemists, pharmacologists and biologists often highlighting the consistent exceptions to the model, including the behaviour of compounds such as dioxins, cadmium, mercury, pesticides and herbicides, and many pharmaceuticals. A number of things have happened over the last century that trouble Paracelsus’ proclamation. The early twentieth century introduction and mass circulation of novel synthetic chemicals that interact with bodies in ways that blatantly fail to conform to this model has been one of the most significant. The emergence of unexpected pathologies associated with these compounds has prompted research into the contextual contingency of toxicant risk and harm. This research has generated concepts such as ‘low dose effects’ (when a compound acts in a systematically different and sometimes more harmful way at low doses), cocktail effects (where the effects of a toxicant changes based on what it is combined with in a body) and critical windows of vulnerability (meaning that bodies are affected differently depending on their stage in development) among many other factors that suggest a linear understanding of dose–response mechanisms often misses crucial relational variables. In this chapter I will examine some of the ways in which the proliferation of new classes of synthetic chemicals, and antimicrobial compounds in particular, over the last century have transformed global ecologies. The manifest effects of the circulation of these chemicals within late industrial biologies and ecologies is challenging the notion that toxicity is always inherent to a specific, tracible, concrete substance. Modern sanitation and antibiotics were supposed to sever the link between disease and the environment, thus freeing landscapes and buildings to be engineered for other ends. However, like pathogenicity, toxicity is coming to be understood as an emergent property of systemic interactions at a given spatial and temporal scale, within a given ecology. Like for many determinants of health, these pathogen ecologies are divided along socio-economic lines, with already marginalised communities who have been subject to racialised and other forms of historic inequality bearing the brunt of

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these emergent conditions. Socio-economic status not only determines probable proximity to polluted landscapes and toxicant-laden products and infrastructures, but ones’ capacity access adequate health care. In this chapter I first look at how the simultaneous rise of industrial production, systems for information management and classification, and prevailing ideas about pathology, combined to produce a situation in which hazards and risks have come to be quantified in terms of specific, abstract molecules. Like the quest to hunt down and eliminate given germs as discreet substances, so the regulation of chemical toxicants across jurisdictional contexts has sought to manage molecules as specified and consistent things. I discuss how this move is part of a broader twentieth century reconceptualisation of the world in a molecular register that has had important implications for scientific and regulatory practices, the types of interactions and processes that have been rendered perceptible, and consequently, the types of global toxicant flows, landscape modifications and building practices that have been enabled. Rather than attempting to catalogue all of the impacts of products and infrastructures designed around emerging classes of synthetic chemicals at this time, I focus primarily on biocides, or antimicrobials: chemicals intended to control and eliminate microbial life. These compounds illustrate both the limitations of the explanatory abstractions offered by a substance ontology and highlight the value of apprehending these interactions as processes. The use of antimicrobials in production systems and built environments are an exemplary manifestation of the way local ecologies have been conceptualised as passive and homogeneous in the spread of disease, and the notion that the healthy body is a pure body at risk of invasion by specified, bounded, alien entities that are, by definition, out of place. In the final part of the chapter I delve more deeply into the specific forms of antimicrobial measures deployed to control spaces and life, and their impacts on bodies, dwellings and global bacterial evolution. In particular, I look at their use in indoor environments to examine their role in training and sensitising bodies to environments in perverse ways, and their contribution to antimicrobial resistance through the flow of genes between globally interconnected bacterial populations. The history of trying to control both germs and toxicants as immutable substances has transformed the bodies of bacteria and other

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organisms in ways that have prompted critical reflection on the value of categories such as ‘species’ and ‘pathogen’ as the most appropriate containers or organisational units to understand interaction in the biosphere. Similarly, exposure to synthetic chemical toxicants has transformed human and other animal bodies such that the ways our immune systems respond to our environments have shifted. This realisation prompts critical reflection on concepts of pathogenicity, immunity and the meaning of a ‘healthy’ environment.

The Logic of Germs and Molecular Identity New classes of chemicals emerged from the industrial processes and applications that accompanied increased industrial production from the late nineteenth century. Detailed histories of these transformations and their effects have been expertly detailed by others (Nash 2006; Roberts et al. 2008; Murphy 2008; Boudia and Jas 2014; Langston 2010; Liboiron et al. 2018). I limit myself here to noting that the rapid growth of chemical manufacturing, and the increase in petroleum-based industrialisation in particular, produced new synthetic hormones, pesticides, antimicrobials, preservatives, colourants and other compounds that served the needs of emerging consumer markets and extended supply chains. It was at this time that we see the beginnings of new types of molecular relations that extend beyond their sites of immediate production and use to traverse globally connected flows of matter and trade; forever chemically transforming life from humans to bacteria. As with microbes, chemical compounds transform and are transformed by their interactions. New forms of evidence have been emerging since the 1960s that are showing how late industrial synthetic chemicals circulate and participate in the bodies of both macro and microorganisms that challenge notions of toxicity based on following single molecules (Liboiron et al. 2018). These molecular modifications have flowed throughout and transformed global ecologies, with distributed, but largely uneven effects. Harm associated with chemically and microbially restructured environments has disproportionately fallen on those who are already marginalised, and lack the economic or political means to protect

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themselves, move away from the places they inhabit, or partially quarantine from systems of food production, consumer products and dwellings that produce toxic interactions. Looking at modern techno-capsules as dwelling environments entangled in this larger web of ecological change, we can see how novel synthetic chemicals have become embedded in the flows of food, pharmaceuticals, domestic maintenance, cleaning and leisure, and the very fabric of buildings themselves. Novel synthetic chemicals, and petrochemicals, in particular, have come to play a central role in the development of many normative everyday objects and practices that are increasingly difficult to disentangle from our lives. There has been a dawning understanding of the role of environmental toxicants in emerging diseases since around the 1950s, and particularly since Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, that has re-established certain local ecological characteristics as determinants of disease. However, the ways in which these variables are measured and quantified as potential hazards are often grounded in the same logic of tracking and eliminating discrete, individualised entities. The reasons for this are not only to do with the metaphysical stance of activists or scientists, but the regulatory and information management systems within which risk of harm must be demonstrated (Hepler-Smith 2019). A crucial part of the story of modern techno-capsule ecologies is the institutionalisation of the idea of a chemical as a discrete, identifiable entity, irrespective of its past, present and future contexts and interactions. The germ ontology, grounded in substance metaphysics, served as a model for specifying chemical contaminants in environments and bodies: purity is the base state and disease is caused by the invasion of a discrete specified substance. From around the turn of the twentieth century information about chemicals has generally come attached to a ‘molecular identity’—an abstraction containing a particular set of atoms linked together by a specific network of bonds (Hepler-Smith 2019). This is not the only way of presenting chemical information, but one that emerged from the knowledge and regulatory requirements of the period in which chemical information management systems were established. The scientific and industrial acceleration of the nineteenth

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century created an urgent need for new modes of classifying and organising information in order to ensure multiple international actors could make sense of new scientific discoveries, and to synchronise and make information legible across fields and industries (Bowker and Starr 1999). Evan Hepler-Smith (2019) has astutely traced the bureaucratic history of molecular identity as a category of thing that can be defined, measured, and classified independent of its origins, transformations, and effects. He highlights an event in Geneva in 1892 at which distinguished chemists from around the world came together for the first time to develop international standards for how chemicals are named. The conference, and the priorities guiding the protocol developed, were motivated by a need to deal with the proliferation of chemicals that accompanied new forms of industrial production, and to enable industry to further accelerate. The new system was to make it easy for those involved in the industries utilising the burgeoning production of new synthetic chemicals. They required a system that would enable the development of new chemical products through easily tracible formulas, and to protect the intellectual property of those developing them. The use of molecular identity allowed editors of reference works to condense the substantial chemistry literature and chemical patents into rationally ordered lists and catalogues. These reference works, primarily paid for by industry, became essential for commercial research by making it possible to search reliably and efficiently through long lists of chemicals in ways that were legible to chemists and non-chemists alike. Hepler-Smith (2019) explains that the emergence of molecular identity from this process guided by bureaucratic requirements attracted criticism from many chemists at the time. The representation of complex and changeable patterns of connection at the atomic scale as something that is structurally fixed with a particular identity, made many chemists concerned that molecular identity was not an abstraction that would suit the needs of teaching or experimentation, which required an allowance for molecular flexibility and contextual interaction. The abstractions that chemists generally used to convey molecular information were in the form of diagrams that were acknowledged to be tools for specific purposes, rather than pictures of reality. Molecular diagrams were valuable because they afforded an imperfect but useful way to conceptualise relationships in ways that were legible across research areas and to

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build the bases of experiments and theories. Molecular identity was not useful for these purposes. Rather, the method of categorising molecular identity and the resultant chemical registry (CAS Registry) effectively served the purpose of making chemical information more accessible for the purpose of innovation and regulation for industrial advancement. This is not to suggest that molecular identity bears no resemblance to the material manifestation of chemicals in the world. Rather, it highlights that it is one means of representation that does not capture all that is going on (Stein 2004). It is particularly important to consider the way that abstractions have been created for specific purposes when diagrammatic models and ways of arranging information are then carried over for use in other systems with other goals (Bowker and Starr 1999). The establishment of molecular identity for the bureaucratic purposes associated with innovation and manufacturing also locked it in as the framework through which other chemical characteristics were assessed, such as toxicity. The regulatory approach to the management of potentially hazardous chemical compounds around the world today can be traced back to the decisions made about how chemicals should be represented and classified in the CAS registry (Hepler-Smith 2019). While not its original intended purpose, molecular identity and the registry were rapidly adopted as the key means through which the toxicity of chemical products and industrial emissions were documented and controlled.

Categorising Toxicity As industrial production accelerated in the late nineteenth century in Europe and the US, the toll on workers’ bodies of both the hard labour and industrial chemicals they were working with began to show (Otter 2016). Motivated by a desire to mitigate losses of labour inefficiency, industrial hygienists began to take note of the physiological effects of chemical exposures in factories. Toxicology emerged in the context of the increasing burden of factory life on workers’ bodies and the need for a systematised way to address

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them that both prevented litigation and enabled production to continue. The setting of safe exposure limits, based on the threshold model of understanding the effects of poisons, became the objective of a new era of toxicology research grounded in laboratory experimentation (Vogel 2008). Within this model of conceptualising and quantifying environmental risk, it was only health effects that could be linked to specific types of exposures and a measurable physiological effect that were recognised. Health conditions that were not able to be diagnosed in this way were often ignored (Nash 2008). The disease ontology of germ theory, combined with physiological thought, molecular identity and the emerging need to address worker exposure in factories converged to produce an idea of bodily and environmental purity that became embedded in the frameworks that regulated food, atmospheric and waterborne pollutants (Nash 2008). The belief in bodily purity and the localisation of disease in particular pathogens or chemicals that was popularised by sanitarian reformers and enshrined by bacteriologists was also translated to resources such as food and water. Beginning with an assumption that purity is the norm and the invasion of polluting germs or toxicants is an aberration, environments and bodies were established as entities that should be pure and consistent (Shotwell 2016). However, once it was realised that a pure state for water and air was not achievable in the context of accelerating industrial production, the solution was not to complicate the notion of purity in favour of complex environmental interactivity, but to institutionalise the concept of acceptable threshold levels for toxicants linked to specific molecular identities. As toxicology broke out of the factory to begin regulating the substances that were entering into the water, air, food and buildings the assumption that the presence of, and exposure to, some level of industrial chemicals was an inevitable and a necessary part of industrialised society was established. The question was not if they were safe, but at what level (Vogel 2008). To determine these levels, regulatory safety standards were established based on presumed consistent and stable properties of specific chemicals (Daemmrich 2008). The experiments used to determine the safety standard for each chemical involved exposing lab animals

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to high doses of each given substance in a laboratory setting to calculate the highest level at which no toxic effects were observed. This point was termed the no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) or the lowest observed adverse effect level (LOAEL). Exposures to chemicals that fall below these levels are supposedly safe for humans. Although some variability in responses is acknowledged through an ‘uncertainty’ factor of 100–1,000-fold that is added to these values, predictive models of the dose–response relationship, rather than empirical evidence, are used to assess the risks of doses below the NOAEL or LOAEL (Vogel 2008). The enshrining of threshold limit values in toxicology throughout the 1930s and 1940s carried the assumption that all poisons had a concentration below which no harmful effect would occur; normalising low level chemical exposures, first in the factory then in society writ large. Following this trajectory we can see molecular identity travel from reference works used to aid manufacturing, into a domain of administration intended to address toxicological information that was useful to assess other aspects of the environment (Daemmrich 2008). It was assumed that molecular data recorded in these databases could be sufficiently combined to assess the conditions under which people were being exposed to multiple chemicals at once in the real world without dampening industrial progress (Hepler-Smith 2019). In this way, industrial pollutants were dis-embedded from local ecological conditions and reduced to the recorded information that accompanied their assigned identity as a discreet substance. It was figured that standards could be more rationally and effectively established and monitored on the bases of particular substances, rather than the diverse molecular potentialities than emerged through ecological processes. Hepler-Smith draws on the example of perfluorocarbon acids and related compounds (PFAS) to show how this system has been unable to provide the abstractions, mechanisms and accountability to ensure the evidence required to demonstrate the dire health hazards of these immutable compounds can be evaluated. As a result, industry has remained largely free from liability and responsibility in their continued use. Questions of evidence and reporting become even more slippery when attempting to account for how some substances are transformed by and present new hazards

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based on the different industrial and biological processes they become entwined with. As it came to be assumed that molecular identity carried all of the necessary information to determine not only what a chemical could do within a product, but also its toxicological properties, manufacturers and regulators gained a false sense of confidence that enabled the vast growth and proliferation of synthetic chemicals. This multiplication of chemical substances, and their associated discharge, spread and intermingling in more environments and bodies, had to be accounted for via bureaucratic systems. This led to further attempts to coordinate, centralise and universalise information about chemicals from disparate sources. By the mid-twentieth century, the foremost reference tool internationally became the American Chemical Society’s publication Chemical Abstracts, which put all chemical information from industrial hygiene, toxicology and pharmacology into molecule-by-molecule order and saw the establishment of centralised government databases (Hepler-Smith 2019). As information infrastructures have become more internationally interconnected, the linking of toxicological information with molecular identity has become more expansive and entrenched. Countries across the world, including the more precaution-oriented Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulations in the European Union, are based in databases of molecular identities. A key implication of this is that any new evidence that emerges about toxicity has to come linked to a specific chemical if it is to be taken seriously. As with the infinite ways the abstractions of substance metaphysics have come to shape what we think the world is, the molecular abstractions developed for the purposes of industrial innovation and landscape modification have come to be confused with what chemicals actually are and how they act in the world. It ‘transformed molecular identity from an interface interconnecting different sources of chemical information into an ontology defining what counted as a chemical’ (Hepler-Smith 2019, 23).

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Seeing the World as Molecules The way environments have come to be understood as affecting bodies through discrete, essentially toxic substances is linked to a broader trend towards comprehending the world in a molecular register. Nikolas Rose (2007) uses the term ‘molecularisation of life’ to refer to the rise of technoscientific practices that refocus life at the molecular scale. Rose primarily refers to practices that emerged in the twentieth century in genomics, biotechnology and neurochemistry, which have populated the living world with newly legible molecular entities like genes and an accompanying style of thinking that emphasises individualised risk and the provision of information. He states that ‘this molecularization was not merely a matter of the framing of explanations at the molecular level. Nor was it simply a matter of the use of artefacts fabricated at the molecular level. It was a reorganization of the gaze of the life sciences, their institutions, procedures, instruments, spaces of operation and forms of capitalization’ (Rose 2006). However, both Michelle Murphy (2008) and Bruce Braun (2007) point to a more entrenched molecular ontology that can be traced back to germ theory, and I would argue, to Aristotle. In Linda Nash’s (2008, 656) words ‘…the only aspects of the environment that can be regulated in the name of health are those that can approximate bacteria…’ that is, a single, essential substance that can be seen to penetrate a pure body or substrate. The substance ontology of germs has been carried through other domains of knowledge such as toxicology (molecular identity) and genetics (genes) to render the world as discrete interacting substances. An important implication of seeing the world in a molecular register is that it enables some forms of evidence to be mobilised, while obscuring others that cannot be assembled using the information management systems and entities that have been enshrined as legitimate. On the one hand, it enables scientists, regulators and environmental and public health advocates to trace and demonstrate toxicity in particular environments where certain molecules are evidently present. However, the requirement that adverse health outcomes must be directly traceable to a certain and specific toxic molecule means that health conditions

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with more complex and cumulative environmental causes often remain unrecognised (Mitman et al. 2004). Reliance on the abstract concept of molecular identity not only limits how toxicants can be traced through local ecologies into bodies, it also structures how they are managed in product innovation and industrial production, including the products that comprise modern dwellings. In the majority of chemical regulation systems around the world, chemical compounds are innocent until proven guilty. In many cases this means that compounds, such as many bisphenols and phthalates, are used in consumer products prior to research into their long-term effects. When enough public or scientific concern is raised about the potential toxicity of a certain compound, it is only then that tests are conducted, and even then, findings are often contested if the relationship between molecular action and harm is not linear and universal. In the cases where a chemical is restricted on the basis of this testing, manufacturers often replace it with a closely related chemical that provides the same functional qualities to the product, but has not undergone the same scrutiny (Dubash et al. 2018). These replacement chemicals are often found to be equally toxic, and thus the cycle continues. The textbook case is the replacement of bisphenol A (BPA) with bisphenol S (BPS) in food packaging; the latter is now proving to be equally hazardous to the former (MacKendrick 2018). This process is commonly referred to as ‘regrettable substitution’ or chemical ‘whack-a-mole’ and is enabled by regulatory systems structured around individual molecular substances. As Hepler-Smith (2019, 536) observes ‘molecular bureaucracy has material consequences’.

Interactions Made Imperceptible To understand how the toxicants that are now characteristic of the indoor biome have come to define and shape indoor bodies, it is important to examine the drivers and effects of ongoing exposures to toxicants at levels below their designated safe threshold limits. In the 1950s legislation in the US and Europe designated safe exposure levels for chemicals in food from pesticides, plastics and other products, rather than designating

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toxicants as poisons per se. The key reason for this is that environmental exposures to chemical toxicants at low levels were deemed by industry and regulators to be a necessary and inevitable part of industrialisation. However, even around that time, texts such as Silent Spring reflected a growing awareness within many agricultural communities that pesticides were not behaving according to how they were categorised. Epidemiological research was consistently showing that workers and communities exposed to pesticides were experiencing chronic health conditions at exposure levels below the threshold limits set by regulators. Not long after, the term ecotoxicology was coined by French scientist René Truhaut (1977) to denote the adverse impact of chemical pollutants on humans and other animals. The logic that informed the idea that chemical compounds will act consistently under all environmental conditions and that all chemicals have a threshold limit value that is universally applicable was coming undone. The phenomena of chronic low dose effects deeply troubled the germ-like ontological grounding of regulatory toxicology. However, the complex process of disentangling disease outcomes and molecular identity has meant that evidence of harm has remained disputed and manufacturers of toxicants have been able to inject enough uncertainty into debates to prevent effective regulatory reform. While evidence of low dose exposures to toxicants in the bodies of communities situated in specific ecologies has been manifest since at least the 1960s, it was not until the 1990s that studies measuring the effects of very low dose exposures to pesticides, and industrial chemicals began filling in ‘the black box of low-dose effects’ (Vogel 2008, 670). Since then, studies examining the long-term effects of exposures to pesticides, flame retardants used in clothing and building materials, plasticisers used to alter the qualities of plastics for different products, and other industrial chemicals, began showing that exposures to these compounds during critical periods of development, pregnancy and early life could alter the development of bodies in a number of ways (Diamanti-Kandarakis et al. 2009). These chemical classes that have come to be known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) act at very low levels to turn on and off genes and alter the development of tissues and communication systems in the body (Vandenberg et al. 2012). These changes

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have since been associated with manifold pathologies, including cancer, reproductive, immunological, behavioural and neurological abnormalities and diseases, metabolic conditions and diabetes among other effects. The mechanisms by which EDCs cause harm fundamentally undermine the logic of defining risk according to safe dose limits. Before returning to the implications of these developments for understanding the effects of indoor ecologies on bodies, I will briefly outline how EDCs not only challenge the axiom that ‘the dose makes the poison’ but provide one of the most compelling arguments for the necessity of a processual approach to environmental exposures. At the most basic level, EDCs are defined as such because they interfere with, mimic, or block hormones (Zoeller et al. 2012). Unlike poisons as traditionally conceived, EDCs do not act like foreign invaders, but participate in the body’s endocrine system. The function of the endocrine system is to send hormones out at appropriate times. They then travel through the body until they hit a receptor that they match—much like a lock and key (Liboiron 2015). When the key turns the lock, the receptor sends a signal to the DNA in the cell to conduct a particular activity, such as developing new tissue or making proteins. EDCs are the same shape as hormones, and act like imposter keys by blocking receptors so the intended hormones cannot reach them, or signalling cells to do work at inappropriate times. Because they do not always land on the same receptors, the effects of EDCs are variable and unpredictable, meaning they can have no notable effect or they can cause incredibly harmful effects such as miscarriages, metabolic disorders, early onset puberty and menopause, neurological disorders, certain cancers and diabetes, among others. Both the World Health Organisation and United Nations Environment Programme have reported that around 800 chemicals are known or suspected to be EDCs that remain in circulation in consumer products and building materials (UNEP/WHO 2013). Because different hormones are meant to be released at different stages for different people (and other animals), the timing of an exposure to an EDC in relation to the age of the body being exposed, their other proximate exposures and prior exposures over their life course, all influence if and how a body will be transformed. The importance of timing has led some researchers to propose that endocrine disruption reframes

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the ‘dose makes the poison’ principle as the ‘timing makes the poison’ (Vogel 2008). The necessity of considering the temporality of exposure in order to understand how exposures become meaningful cannot be adequately captured if one attempts to understand endocrine disruption in terms of interacting but discreet and bounded substances. The layering of processes also occurs at different temporal scales, from the momentary to the generational. There is now evidence that EDCs alter heritable gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms, like DNA methylation, that change the expression of DNA without causing a change in the sequencing (Crews and McLachlan 2006). Processes of endocrine disruption must therefore be considered in terms of the interactions between the intergenerational spatio-temporal scale of exposure, with the rapid and micro spatio-temporal scale of subsequent exposures; in other words, they only make sense in relation to processes.

Classifications Shape Material Environments The substance logic of germs and molecular identity, and the bureaucratic classification systems built with them, set the material parameters that have shaped the trajectories of many products and materials. Bowker and Starr (1999, 10) define classification as a ‘spatial, temporal or spatiotemporal segmentation of the world. A “classification system” is a set of boxes into which things can be put to then do some kind of work’. They go on to say that “We have a moral and ethical agenda in our querying of these systems. Each standard and each category valorises some point of view and silences another” (Bowker and Starr 1999, 5). The failure to recognise the processes involved in low dose effects, and other complex body-ecology interactions, has largely silenced the multitude of variables that contribute to pathogenic environments. Not only this, their imperceptibility has meant that the practices and structures that make modern techno-capsules possible, have become utterly dependant on processes that create toxic, pathogenic ecologies. Classifications relevant to disease are not the only categories that matter for product innovation. Manifold categorisation practices and

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standards have shaped the materiality of the indoors. Consumer products must meet standards pertaining to choking and fire hazards, while building standards have had a profound influence, from insulation and energy efficiency requirements to fire protection. Indoor environments have been moulded according to standards established around risks that are often linear, consistent and easily reproducible in a lab setting, while disregarding more complex and contingent risks that emerge through a confluence of factors. This was the case with the development of Sick Building Syndrome in the 1980s, a phenomena that arose through the combination of low ventilation, and the prolific use of particular chemical compounds in building materials and furnishings (Murphy 2006). Not only was the Syndrome multicausal, but it manifested as a cluster of obtuse and vague symptoms, such as headaches, rashes and sore eyes, and disproportionately affected women, who were the primary occupants of affected office spaces: all of which converged to undermine the validity of the victims’ claims (Murphy 2006). More recently, state and industry commitments to energy efficiency, specifically defined and measured in relation to Carbon emissions, have been materialised in buildings. Commitments to emissions reductions, as defined through specific industry standards, has resulted in the further sealing of buildings to improve the efficiency of indoor climate control. As discussed in Chapter 3, the porosity of buildings to outdoor air is one of the most important determinants of the indoor microbiome: sealed buildings are dominated by microorganisms associated with decaying human bodies and food. The standards that shape our dwellings are a direct product of prevailing ‘regimes of perceptibility’ (Murphy 2006) and political capital. The types of abstract micro-entities made perceptible via these standards (e.g. Carbon) and the processes that are obscured (e.g. microbial and toxicant ecologies) drive indoor ecological evolution. The regime of perceptibility that has guided the classifications and standards that constrain the development of techno-capsule ecologies are still, at their core, antimicrobial, and necessitate a conception of the world grounded in essentialised substances. By largely obscuring the role of ecological process in disease causation, germ theory and bacteriology have helped enable interior spaces, cities and regions to be developed for ends that aligned with other priorities of the industrial age; by localising

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disease in specific substances and divorcing it from broader ecologies, the environment was liberated to be manipulated for other purposes (Nash 2006). This is not to suggest that the environment was completely disregarded, but that the application of universal environmental engineering practices, such as sanitation and plumbing systems were considered sufficient to carry invading germs away from otherwise pure cities and buildings, as noted in Chapter 2. It was assumed that uniform landscape engineering principles and schematics could be applied across the United States, Europe and their numerous settler colonial societies such as Australia, with the same outcomes in each place. The same logic of universal purity and contaminant applied to the management of industrial toxicants. It is from this point of imperceptibility, and disregard for complex ecological interactivity and emergence, that we can make sense of how urban techno-capsules have come to be structured with minimal consideration for their environmental impacts on occupants. As I have argued frequently, an orienting design consideration for techno- capsules is the ability to selectively exclude invading noises, odours, organisms, pollutants, and people from one’s pure, controlled environment: a fiction enabled by the notion of a world made of substances. According to the logic of bacteriology, environmental impacts on human health should be countered with efforts to purify the environment and exterminate the invader that is ‘out of place’. If the causes of disease are localised in individual pathogens and chemicals, the logical solution is to purify the environment and eliminate the invader. In her discussion of disease control in agricultural contexts, Nash discusses how proposals to control E. coli outbreaks in the US have focussed on ‘sterilising’ the agricultural system and increasing the testing of food for invading pathogens, rather than analysing how industrialised cattle farming practices or centralised meat processing create ideal pathogenic environments (Nash 2006). The same logic can be applied to the prevention of E. coli poisoning in a domestic kitchen, which generally involves a liberal application of antimicrobial cleaning products to surfaces, rather than an examination of the systems that carry E. coli into the home, and the micro-ecological characteristics that would enable it to flourish.

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The imperative to sterilise environments rather than encourage nonpathogenic ecologies through more ‘probiotic’ practices is particularly pronounced in approaches to indoor environmental management. Antimicrobial chemicals, the key agents of sterilisation, provide one of the most pertinent points of entanglement between the ecologies of domestic microbes and toxicants. In the following section I examine how environmental health strategies that rely on antimicrobial compounds have played a pivotal role in shaping not only indoor, but all microbial evolution, human development and their role in the spread of antimicrobial resistance and pathogens. Antimicrobial ecologies are a product of the convergence of multiple industrial scales, including food production and preservation, human disease control and hygiene practices; the nexus between distinct approaches to managing risks, populations and landscapes, and the imperatives of commodity production, comfort and marketing that converged in the twentieth century. The perverse outcomes of this dynamic are forcing a re-examination of prior ways of conceptualising body-environment interactions, how our dwellings are constructed, and existing classification practices for both organisms and chemicals.

Prevention and Extermination: The Rise of Biocides The modernist understanding of the body as a hierarchically organised factory was not only important for architecture, but supported the development of chemical compounds to exterminate germs residing within bodies and homes. Hygiene exhibitions in places such as the Deutsches Hygiene Museum discussed in the previous chapter were promoted by designers, public health officials and burgeoning businesses that manufactured products purporting to eliminate invaders from immaculate corporeal and dwelling machines. Karl August Lingner, the co-founder of the European mouthwash and toothpaste company Odol, established a number of hugely popular hygiene exhibitions in which visitors could see bacteria in microscopes, alongside large models of the same cultures, enabling the public to visualise the entities that they were then instructed

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in eliminating (Schnapp 2013). Public health campaigns and engagement in hygiene science were a strong normative force in domestic maintenance by the 1920s across Europe, North America, Australia and other developed nations. Like the spatialised forms of governance intended to civilise the bodies of the masses and impede the movement of germs in the late nineteenth century, biocides were developed in the hope of maintaining purity where dirt may still sneak in. The rise of chemical cleaning agents in the home was not simply a result of the new hygiene imperative, but the rise of emerging chemical industries and mass-produced consumer products in the early twentieth century (Forty 1995). Even prior to the popularisation of germ theory and bacteriology, the sanitary movement of the mid-late nineteenth century directed women in the creation of home cleaning concoctions, such as soap, by combining lye and rendered waste grease. The materials recommended were generally household substances that also served other purposes, including lamp oil, vinegar, sand and milk, and required a high degree of practical literacy and labour to clean with effectively. Home economics manuals, and an increasing proliferation of hygiene and housekeeping publications towards the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contained recipes intended to promote domestic sterility, and its aesthetic proxies. For example, Holt’s Encyclopaedia of Household Economy, 1903, includes instructions for the use of biocides such as zinc sulphate and copper, and the creation of solutions made from soap and carbonic acid, and oxalic acid for bleach. It also includes a number of chemical tests that can be performed to determine the sterility of water for drinking (Holt 1903). As the sanitary movement accelerated, stronger and more poisonous solutions were increasingly used, leading to increased pressure on mothers to label and manage toxicants within the domestic space (Jones and Benrubi 2013). The use of chemicals for cleaning purposes accelerated further as bacteriology gained traction and laboratory experimenters revealed that most microbes studied at that time could be eliminated with heat or chemical disinfectants. For example, prior to 1880, only two commercial cleaning products, ammonia and Sapolio, were advertised in the United States, aside from body soap (Jones and Benrubi 2013). Based on US Census data, expenditure on cleaning and polishing products increased

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sevenfold per capita between 1909 and 1929 (Lough and Gainsbrugh 1935), and stores opened separate departments for household cleaning products. The increasing perceptibility of the germ as a conceptual entity also dovetailed with the burgeoning chemical, manufacturing and advertising industries in the early twentieth century. The interdependent rise of new refining, manufacturing and distribution processes enabled an enormous proliferation of mass-produced cleaning products. These developments were part of the industrial boom that demanded universally legible ways of managing chemical information that eventually enshrined molecular identity as a common language across industries. The commercialisation and scientisation of hygiene also produced a shift in power over who held the knowledge about proper practices. Prior to the industrial production of cleaning products, women were generally the traditional holders of household practical wisdom and knowledge. However, they were recast through this period throughout Australia, Northern Europe and the US in particular, as ignorant of the type of scientific knowledge required to effectively clean their homes and children (Tomes 1999). Their mixtures of household ingredients composed in response to highly attuned diagnoses of dirtiness were deemed unfit for the spectre of germs. This undermining of women’s domestic wisdom shifted their role from one of expert and ‘home economist’ to consumer. Numerous advertisements from the early twentieth century from soaps to toilet paper show women turning to expert males clad in suits or laboratory coats for advice about keeping their homes safe and clean (Lupton and Miller 1996). Marketing also began to promote the conceptualisation, and importantly visualisation, of germs prolifically and in new ways. The marks of impurity and the substances that were considered dirty burgeoned. As the need to clean advanced, so did the number of products available to address the increasingly diverse range of hygiene requirements. This line of marketing was enabled and exacerbated by the framing of indoor ecological relations as a zero-sum game of war, in which pure environments were constantly under siege from dirty germ invaders

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(Tomes 1999). Following this conceptual model, the hospital increasingly became the model for exemplary domestic design and management. As Lupton and Miller frame it ‘the house was treated as both a hospital and a patient, in need of intensive product therapy from antiseptic detergents to paper towels’ (Lupton and Miller 1996, 20). In the US tiles were marketed as ‘hospital tiles’ and new seamless toilet seats were designed to promote ‘hospital cleanliness’. A key impetus behind the types of chemical compounds developed and utilised in the early twentieth century was to reduce the damage caused by many of the toxins used in traditional home-made solutions (Tomes 1997). Substances used, such as caustic lye and sand, would abrade, blister and callus the skin, while the long-term effects of other cleaning chemicals such as Lead eventually became apparent. Newly designed compounds were also intended to work more effectively meaning that less labour and ‘elbow grease’ was required in the act of cleaning, increasing the marketability and uptake synthetic chemical biocides. It is in the context of these competing priorities and pressures that we see the normalisation of synthetic biocide use in domestic cleaning practices across regions within the reach of product distribution networks. Their adoption was not, of course, homogenous, but entered domestic cleaning conventions at different rates, and in interaction with existing practices and product assemblages in diverse locations. The affordances of home biocides have, however, had a structuring influence on normative domestic spatial design with global effect. The processes of interior spaces, materials and surfaces have co-evolved with the products designed to clean them. Perhaps most significantly for the micro-ecologies of homes, the promise of targeted and absolute microbial extermination enabled other natural environmental controls, such as airflow and light, to fall away as design priorities. As I discussed in Chapter 3, homes have in part been shaped by the desire to selectively lock oneself away in bubbles of personal comfort. The location of disease within specific ontologised substances, coupled with the illusion of indoor ecological control enabled by home biocides meant that architecture could turn away from disease to perfecting other aspects of indoor life. While there has been

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a resurgence of concern over the effects of buildings on health, particularly since the emergence of Sick Building Syndrome’ in the 1970s, reliance on biocides to prevent potential pathogens has remained largely unquestioned within the healthy building movement. I discuss some of the exceptions to this in the following chapter, but by and large, the co-evolution of normative building layouts, materials, indoor cleaning products, developer incentives and a germophobic disease ontology has created a kind of lock-in that makes it challenging to alter one of these variables in isolation from the others. The changes to the indoor chemical landscape produced by convergent practices aiming for sterility and comfortable enclosure have created new selective pressures for microbial populations and new exposure patterns for humans to synthetic and organic compounds. Over the last 40 years the ecological effects of cleaning chemicals in combination with enclosed indoor spatial configurations have become increasingly apparent. Without the environmental flux that shifts biological material in outdoor environments, the indoor environment enables chemicals to persist and accumulate. The antimicrobial load from cleaning products and building materials impregnated with antimicrobial chemicals during manufacturing is amplified by the spatial characteristics of indoor environments and the accrual of antimicrobial residues within interior surface materials. In the following section I trace some of the implications of these dominant chemo-spatial arrangements for modern techno-capsules.

Antimicrobial Spatio-Substance Control In this section I explore some of the reasons that a process-oriented approach provides a more useful and encompassing frame to address how indoor antimicrobial practices influence the bodies of occupants over time. As I discussed in Chapter 2, the immune system is trained to anticipate and react to potential attackers via the body’s encounters with the world from its prenatal genesis and throughout its early life. Similarly, interactions with different types of chemicals at different stages of development affect how the body develops and how it becomes reactive to

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future environmental exposures. Following the processes by which bodies are transformed via their cumulative encounters with different environmental substances is often called an ‘exposomic’ approach. In 2005 molecular epidemiologist Christopher Wild proposed the term ‘exposome’ to capture the totality of life-course environmental exposures from the prenatal period onwards (Wild 2012). This represented an important repositioning of the analytical focus of environmental harm by shifting attention from the source of harm (e.g. a smokestack) to the affected body, thus accounting for the complex, cumulative and contingent ways that toxicants alter bodies. The exposome is shaped by encounters with the ambient environment, behaviours such as eating habits, and internal bodily processes, like circulating endogenous hormones, and gut microbiota (Wild 2012). An exposomic approach inherently resists the idea that following individual molecules and exposures is a useful way to understand how bodies are transformed by environmental encounters; prior exposures alter how we respond to future exposures. While the application of exposomic science has been criticised for remaining too focussed in the molecular register, and on those being harmed rather than those committing violence (Senier et al. 2017), the logic of the broad approach and its ability to account for processual interactions and cumulative effects in ways that traditional approaches cannot is still of great value. To illustrate some of the ways that attempts to control microbes through total elimination cumulatively structure the effects of all subsequent indoor exposures, I focus on several examples of how biocides used indoors are priming the bodies of homo-indoors to react in certain ways. These include their contribution to declining microbial biodiversity and antimicrobial resistance, in addition to multiple interactive effects, like endocrine disruption, carcinogenesis, increased sensitisation to pathogens, other alterations to immune function, and neurological and reproductive system disturbance. Antimicrobials used prodigiously in cleaning products and building materials since the mid-twentieth century embody a kind of ‘scorched earth’ (Velazquez et al. 2019) cleaning ideology that aims for absolute sterilisation. This approach wipes out entire microbial ecologies and often encourages recolonisation by a less diverse group of tough

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microbes. Generalised antimicrobial use indoors can therefore produce selective pressures on microbial life that make it more prone to pathogen colonisation. To provide a brief example, in research led by the microbiologist Jan Dirk van Elsas a series of experiments were conducted to determine the conditions under which the bacterium E. coli, a common cause of household food poisoning, was most likely to flourish (van Elsas et al. 2012). The research team filled flasks with sterilised soil and then filled each of the flasks with a different number of bacterial strains, one with 5, one with 20 and one with 100. The final flask was filled with naturally biodiverse non-sterilised soil. E. coli was then added to each of the flasks and they observed what happened over 60 days. At the end of the 60 days, they found that in the soil inoculated with only five strains grew more slowly than when it was in a sterilised substrate. Following this pattern, the E. coli struggled even more to grow and disappeared faster in the soil with 20 strains and more again in the soil with 100. In the soil containing natural microbial diversity, the E. coli was barely detectable. The soil strata in this experiment can be likened to surfaces such as a kitchen bench in the home. If the bench has been sterilised using a disinfectant and then a sprinkling of food, such as crumbs or dead skin, are added, the perfect conditions for E. coli are created. However, if E. coli lands in a surface ecology that is already diverse, it is much less likely to get a foothold. This is because within an established ecological community all of the ecological roles (or niches) are likely to be filled and competition for resources would be high. In addition to the potential for scorched earth cleaning practices to promote opportunistic pathogens, biocides produce a host of other micro-ecological effects depending on their composition and use. For example, some research has shown that some biodegradable detergent products may promote the growth of household bacteria in areas exposed to prolonged wetting by giving them food (Hu and Hartmann 2020). The efficacy of chemical sterilisation also varies significantly according to the active ingredients in products, the target microbes, the spaces they are applied to, how frequently, and the mechanisms by which the chemicals act on different forms of life. There are a number of factors related to the characteristics of the indoor environment which will influence the capacity of a product to target the intended undesirable microbial

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community, such as mould in the shower. For instance, when microbes are organised into a biofilm, chemical agents may be less able to penetrate cells. Similarly, microbes have exhibited increased tolerance or resistance to cleaning compounds in the presence of certain organic materials like sodium hypochlorite (Velazquez et al. 2019). As a result, the presence of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, or other organic materials in an environment may decrease the efficacy of cleaning agents. The capacity to kill is not inherent to the compound, as the marketing may suggest, but contingent on the process into which the compounds enter. The ecological effects of antimicrobials can also be modulated by the specific mechanisms employed by different antimicrobial compounds. Some of the key mechanisms for attacking microbes include osmolarity disruptors, oxidisers, detergents and surfactants, enzyme targeting agents (Velazquez et al. 2019). Antimicrobials are not only ineffective if they target the wrong type of life, but can cause unintended effects under different indoor use conditions. For example, oxidising chemicals are often effective when used on fungi and bacteria with endospores, however many, such as Chlorine products, are generally only useful within specific pH ranges and can react with organic materials to leave toxic byproducts. Harmful secondary compounds can also be formed when oxidising agents react with fragrances and other Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) (Weschler 2009). Similarly, oxidisers containing Ozone readily react with chemicals in indoor air and surfaces to generate chemical byproducts that are toxic to humans (Weschler 2009; Halden 2014). Detergents and surfactants have also been found to have limited efficacy if used in temperatures below 27°C, in addition to being associated with other health risks such as endocrine disruption (Jaska and Fredell 1980; Diamanti-Kandarakis et al. 2009) and the alteration of the gut microbiome (Velmurugan et al. 2017). One of the most concerning unintended health impacts of antimicrobial use indoors is linked to specific enzyme targeting compounds called triclosan and triclocarban. According to Velazquez et al. (2019) these relatively new chemical compounds have become synonymous in common usage with the term antimicrobial. Around the early 1940s scientists discovered that if the aromatic rings of hydrogen atoms were replaced with chlorine, powerful antimicrobial agents could be created

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(Halden 2014). These compounds, which are mostly absent in natural environments, were rapidly produced in significant quantities. The adverse effects of many of these formulas were discovered early, including eco and human toxicity, and persistence and accumulation in the environment. Some compounds were phased out, however, others such as triclosan and triclocarban have remained in use despite their similar chemistry. With the exception of a recent ban by the US FDA of both chemicals in some over-the-counter products, they remain in use in most countries and are still in other products, including personal care products, textiles, plastics, adhesives, and exposed interior surface coatings, and as disinfecting surface sprays. They are also commonly used as disinfectants which can be sprayed on any surface and wiped down. Triclosan is not only an endocrine disruptor and carcinogen but is known to inhibit immune responses in asthma, allergies, and other atopic disease, in addition to being associated with greater levels of diverse drug resistant bacteria (Fahimipour et al. 2018, Weatherly and Gosse 2017). Triclocarban is thought to also be an endocrine disruptor, in addition to being highly environmentally persistent and an enzyme inhibitor (Halden 2014). In addition to triclosan and triclocarban, compounds regularly used in consumer products and building materials to exterminate or ‘preserve’—i.e. stave off microbial life—have exhibited endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic and mutagenic effects. Some examples include Phenols (household disinfectants), Parabens (personal care and cleaning product preservatives), Boron compounds (building material preservatives and antimicrobial cleaning products), Formaldehyde (building material preservatives, antimicrobial cleaning products and detergents), bisphenols (building material and consumer product preservatives) (Velazquez et al. 2019). Many of these compounds are also used for other purposes in household products and are combined with other chemicals with similar effects, such as phthalates. The cells of bodies that move through indoor atmospheres characterised by multiple, mechanistically diverse, reactive antimicrobials are set on new developmental courses. If these courses are further moulded by exposures in occupational and other outdoor environments imbued with the free flows of environmentally persistent toxicants that characterise late industrial ecologies.

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These compounds also alter bodies in ways that influence future responses to living environments, in addition to the various pathologies associated with direct exposure. Endocrine disruption can lead to disorders including obesity, reproductive abnormalities, diabetes, altered nervous system function, respiratory issues and immune function (UNEP/WHO 2013). If we take the flow on effects of altered immune function as example, endocrine disruptors have been linked to both immune system suppression, increasing susceptibility to infections, and strong immune responses, resulting in inflammation, autoimmune disease or allergies (Bansal et al. 2018). Triclosan and parabens in particular are significantly associated with allergic sensitisation (Savage et al. 2012). If we consider the greater proclivity to allergies and autoimmune disease that is observed in people who were raised in indoor ecologies lacking microbial biodiversity, discussed in Chapter 3, we can see a compounding effect beginning to emerge, in which already sensitised bodies are further compromised by the presence of immune altering compounds. The ways that exposures to toxicants and impoverished microbial ecologies contribute to a person’s exposome, and how they respond to subsequent exposures, does not stop with ambient atmospheric exposures. Practices grounded in generalised microbial annihilation in the indoor environment are paralleled in bodily ablution practices. Although there has been a rise in popular awareness of the importance of maintaining a healthy gut microbiome for overall health, the skin has received relatively less attention. Indeed, the use of antimicrobial agents on the skin, and particularly hands, has continued in an upward trend, and tends to ratchet up in response to epidemic or pandemic events, despite evidence suggesting antimicrobial compounds are no more effective than soap and water. According to some figures, between the outbreak of COVID 19 and mid-2020, sales of hand sanitisers, antimicrobial sprays and masks had increased by 817% (Abramovich 2020). While public health advice has emphasised the importance of hand hygiene in preventing the transmission of disease, the use and marketing of antimicrobials in other personal care products has also seen a substantial increase. Air fresheners, shower gels, moisturisers and hair products are all now commonly marketed as antimicrobial and promote their capacity

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to ‘kill 99% of germs’. In combination with the cocktail of other chemical compounds, such as fragrances, product preservatives, moisturisers, exfoliants and colours, these products alter skin ecologies in a multitude of ways. There are several key pathways through which the application of antimicrobial products to the skin influences how bodies respond to future environmental exposures. In 2012 Julie Serge’s lab created the first topographical maps of the bacterial and fungal diversity of human skin, revealing very specific populations and dynamics on different parts of the body (Findley et al. 2013). Anecdotally, my dentist also recently told me that different parts of the mouth have their own distinct microbial populations. The nuanced ecological interplay within particular niches is further illustrated in programs such The Armpit Microbes project, led by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, which specifically sought to understand how different variables, such as product use, household water sources, other people, frequency of showering etc., influenced what took up residence under peoples arms and how they made them smell (Urban et al. 2016). Multiple studies have found that showering regularly with products that remove oils and contain antimicrobial compounds wipes out skin ecologies (Hamblin 2020). They recolonise, but with different types of microbes suited to the new conditions, and often favouring species that produce more odour. While odour can seem like a purely aesthetic concern, the establishment of microbial populations that produce it is likely to encourage the use of further toxicant-imbued products to mask the smell. The diversity of bacteria on the skin is also important because it provides a similar protective role to biodiversity in other ecologies; it is a natural defence against pathogens. If we indulge the metaphor of the immune system as an army, a biodiverse skin microbiome is the first line of defence. In addition to diversity itself, the presence or absence of particular microbes on the skin can be central to the development of certain conditions. For example, one study found that mice swabbed with Staphylococcus epidermidis, present on most human skin and easily destroyed by antimicrobials, developed fewer skin cancers when exposed to UV light (Nakatsuji et al. 2018). It is suspected this is due to a compound produced by the bacterium called 6-N-hydroxyaminopurine,

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which may prevent the replication of tumour cells. Researchers have also found that products containing parabens can inhibit the growth of Roseomonas mucosa which often kills the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria associated with eczema (Myles et al. 2018). These examples represent a fraction of the ways that the skin helps adapt whole-body physiology under changing environmental conditions. The skin can also produce a wide variety of hormones, cytokine and neurotransmitters in response to environmental stimulus that influence whole-body states, including mental health (Prescott et al. 2017). The microbiome of the skin has also emerged as a crucial player in the so-called ‘allergic march’ of disease. This march refers to a commonly observed pattern of development for allergic diseases whereby a child is sensitised to particular allergens via the skin that manifests as eczema, followed by the development of food allergies and finally asthma. There are a number of triggers for allergic sensitisation via the skin, but research has found that a significant cause is exposure to the antimicrobial EDCs triclosan and parabens used in households (Savage et al. 2012). Those who experience some version of the allergic march in childhood will forever occupy and be affected by indoor ecologies differently to non-sensitised bodies. They are likely to experience greater sensitisation to indoor allergens such as moulds, dust mites and cockroaches. This type of alteration to the gate-keeping ecology of skin is not only caused by compounds in products and buildings materials, but processes connected into the house from external infrastructures and ecologies, such as municipal water. As the example of the showerhead illustrated in the last chapter, the water you use to bathe and drink, where it comes from, how it is treated, the pipes it travels through and what your shower head is made of, all influence the microbiomes of bodies and buildings. If the biodiversity hypothesis is right, the relationship between particular allergens in a home and the allergies of occupants is complex and highly contingent. That is, if individuals are raised in environments that lack microbial biodiversity or ‘old friends’, and where antimicrobial compounds are commonly used, they could be more likely to develop an allergy to, for example, fungi. If certain types of fungal growth are common to urban dwellings in which these bodies reside, allergies are likely to be a common occurrence in urban populations, which they

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are. It has been estimated that 1 in 5 cases of asthma in the US are caused by excess dampness and fungal growth indoors (Mudarri and Fisk 2007). However, it is not microbial exposure alone that contributes to the complexity and diversity of how different bodies may respond to the same indoor environment. Common allergic sensitisers, such as antimicrobials, are often bound up with other properties such as endocrine disruption. The co-evolution of antimicrobial and endocrine disrupting compounds within twentieth century chemical-product ecologies has inextricably bound these compounds and their processual interactions and effects (Landecker 2019). This may mean that someone affected by an endocrine-related health issue, such as metabolic disorder or obesity, may also be affected by allergies. Endocrine disorders, while not exclusively linked to EDCs, have risen with their prevalence, alongside inflammatory disease and phenomena such as antimicrobial resistance, which I discuss below. While antimicrobial compounds are now pervasive in both building materials and the products used to maintain indoor spaces, their immunological effects are not experienced equally. Research has found that allergic diseases are much more common in individuals whose occupations expose them to higher levels of antimicrobials (Anderson et al. 2019). Antimicrobial exposures have been linked to increased incidence for allergic disease in janitors and cleaners, hairdressers, veterinarians, food service workers, dental assistants, metalworkers and above all, health care workers (Maier et al. 2009). Many of the workers in these occupations are part of socio-economic groups that are also exposed to higher levels of toxicants in consumer products and the environment, and have a diminished capacity to protect themselves via consumer decision making e.g. by purchasing organic food and water filters. The recent COVID 19 pandemic is likely to have exacerbated the effects associated with antimicrobial compounds. Some research has found that exposure to the antimicrobial compounds QACs (associated with adverse effects on reproductive and respiratory systems) has substantially increased in the US during the pandemic (Zheng et al. 2020). The unequal distribution of effects is also going to be amplified as ‘essential workers’ such as cleaners and health care workers are likely to have experienced greater levels of exposure overall.

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In addition to the ecological modifications caused by antimicrobial chemicals and other toxicants, the other key player in the transformation of indoor ecologies is antibiotics. Like antimicrobials more broadly, antibiotics kill by selective toxicity. They disrupt microbial processes and structures that do not exist in human cells. In the case of antibiotics, this is achieved through the human utilisation of compounds that microbes create for their own defence. This process, and its history, provide one of the greatest examples of the belief that a substance, which evolved in a specific ecology for a given purpose, can be extracted and applied to diverse ecological settings in predictable and consistent ways without adverse outcomes. This is not to imply that antibiotics are ‘bad’—they have and continue to save millions of lives—but they have not been treated as the fragile, contingent and invaluable resource that they are. The mass production of antibiotics, beginning around the mid-1940s, involved the industrial-scale growth of microorganisms to harvest their metabolic products. Many would be familiar with the genesis of this story—the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 that the Penicillium mould could inhibit bacterial growth in Petri dishes. Although, as Landecker (2019) reminds us, chemicals and metals with antimicrobial properties such as arsenicals, sulphonamides, mercury and copper have been deployed for a much longer period. The discovery of penicillin was followed by all the hype that goes with the promise of a silver bullet, and within a decade, the production of penicillin was international, massively scaled, and intensive energy was being applied to the discovery of other soil microorganisms that may have similar properties. The production of antimicrobial compounds by penicillium, and the relatively small range of other soil organisms that employ this defensive strategy, is a trait that emerged in response to very specific ecological conditions. The mass fermentation of these organisms and use of their antibiotics has essentially resulted in the proliferation of a highly localised adaptive trait in a way that has affected the constitution of all bacteria (Bud 2007). The coincidence of the discovery of antibiotic compounds and war played a significant part in how the latter came to participate so extensively in biology. By 1944 enough antibiotics had been produced to meet the military demand in the war effort (Bud, 2007: 23). By 1945, when it was released to the general public in the US, enough was produced

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to treat 9 million people a month (Landecker 2015). Public enthusiasm was bubbling over the promise of these substances to both treat bacterial diseases and maintain the purity required to promote expansion and growth in other aspects of the economy. In an extension of the same modernising logic that guided massive landscape modifications and sanitation systems, antibiotics rapidly became infrastructural as a way of nullifying suboptimal local environs and promoting consistent, predictable universal growth. As a result, antibiotics have progressively become infrastructural to the production of multiple things that enable the creation and maintenance of life in late industrial society, including agriculture—particularly animal production—longer human lifespans, epidemics and surgery (Landecker 2019). By the 2000s the US alone was producing around 50 million lbs per year (Davies 2006). At the time that antibiotics started to be mass-produced, little was known about how they would affect not only the targeted organism, but the evolution of other bacteria. As I noted earlier, antibiotic compounds evolve in bacteria only under certain ecological conditions that create a specific selective pressure. By producing and dispersing antibiotic compounds throughout such a vast percentage of the ecological niches occupied by bacteria, an obvious evolutionary response from bacterial populations is to favour genes which confer antimicrobial resistance. In the following paragraphs I explain some of the ways that antimicrobial use, particularly in urban indoor ecologies, has contributed not only to the proliferation of bacteria with antimicrobial resistant traits, but the greater sharing of genetic material across bacteria in general. This dynamic process is arguably one of the most important reasons to abandon substantialist abstractions for understanding microbial life.

Encouraging Antimicrobial Resistance In addition to the mutual shaping of bodies and their ecologies, indoor environments have become a key marketplace for the trade and expansion of antimicrobial resistance within the ‘pangenome’ of Earth’s microbes. The motivations and logic of control that have shaped the

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design of indoor ecologies have in many ways afforded the perfect conditions for the spread of antimicrobial resistance (Hu and Hartmann 2020). For antimicrobial resistance of emerge en masse the right conditions for both environmental selection and genetic change had to be met (Gillings et al. 2017). Like antibiotics, antimicrobial resistance is not a trait that appears commonly in bacteria. It only makes sense for it to evolve to combat other bacteria or compounds with antimicrobial properties, which are not that common in nature. In addition to not being necessary for many microbes, the compounds made by the genes that confer resistance to bacteria tend to be energetically expensive (Dunn 2018). As a result, these bacteria are generally outcompeted and do not proliferate in environments in which antimicrobials are absent. In other words, the introduction of antimicrobials added a selective pressure that gave microbes with resistance genes an advantage; they were able to survive while others died away. Resistance to antibiotics is not new, indeed it was discovered very soon after the introduction of the first antibiotics. At the time the mechanism by which it was assumed resistance was emerging was ‘vertical’. As orthodox Mendelian genetics has it, selective pressure works between generations, and it was thus assumed that resistance could only be passed on vertically down the generations. As a result, it was assumed that drugs could outpace any type of resistance that emerged. However, as research into genetic engineering accelerated and multiple drug resistant bacteria became more pervasive, it was discovered that bacteria were not subject to the modes of genetic containerisation experienced by other organisms; they were able to transfer and share genes ‘horizontally’ or ‘laterally’ within bacterial communities (Landecker 2019). Horizontal gene transfer allows bacteria to pass on genes that confer antimicrobial resistance within their networks across species. Microbes exchange genes in this way primarily to enable a coordinated division of labour between differentiated cell types that allow them access to more types of energy sources, habitats, protection and other group survival strategies under particular ecological conditions (Shapiro and Dworkin 1997; Crespi 2001; Webb et al. 2003). Before fleshing out the implications of this and the role of indoor ecologies, I will briefly and simply characterise some (not all) of the ways this happens. One way that

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bacteria share genes is through ‘mobile genetic elements’, which can carry multiple genes between microbes. Transfer happens via physical contact, where both donor and host cells are left with one or more direct copies of genetic material in a process called conjugation, or by a process through which agents like transposons move between cells of different bacteria and encode enzymes into genomic DNA (Crespi 2001; Webb et al. 2003). Antimicrobials are not only driving the exchange of resistance genes, but potentially the spread of genetic ‘porosity’ itself within bacteria (Landecker 2015). Like the propensity to produce antimicrobial compounds, the inclination to shed and receive genetic material depends on evolutionary context. In many situations the acquisition of genes from other bacteria is not beneficial, so many develop protective strategies to break down invading transposons and other mobile genetic elements. However, selective pressure from environments inundated with antimicrobials makes it advantageous for bacteria that are less ‘protective’ and more open to genetic exchange. Antimicrobials have therefore not only increased the prevalence of resistance genes within bacteria, but have likely made bacteria more porous and inclined to genetic exchange in general (Stokes and Gillings 2011). Mobile genetic elements can both alter the organisms that receive the genes within their lifetime, and integrate into their chromosomes. If retained, they are inherited by subsequent generations. Resistance is therefore conferred horizontally and vertically in microbial populations (Stokes and Gillings 2011). The implication is that bacterial genes exist as a kind of bacterial pangenome that represents a pastiche of all the historical uses of antimicrobials and the types of resistance that emerged in response to them since the early twentieth century. The part of the pangenome that confers resistance has been called ‘the resistome’; the shared pool from which all bacteria can draw on if they encounter the selective pressure of antimicrobials (D’Costa et al. 2006). Tauch and Pühler (2002) give the extraordinary example of a plasmid taken from Corynebacterium striatum with a composite structure made up of eight bounded DNA segments, each of which came from bacteria that originated in different geographical locations and types of habitat. Each of these segments last shared a common ancestor around 2 billion years

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ago (Tauch and Pühler 2002). The cosmopolitan mosaic of this plasmid was assembled through pressures and networks that have emerged since the mid-twentieth century. The genomes of bacteria therefore not only record their processes and experiences, but alter how they will move through and transform the world in future. In this way, gene transfer shifts not only how one might think about microbes, but calls for a reconceptualisation of genes not as blueprints for the future, but as an archive of stories that narrate the interactions between beings and their environments. Another important process at play in the spread of resistance is the exchange of genes through commensal bacteria—the microbes that live alongside and support one another. It seems that much of the exchange of genetic material does not occur in human pathogens, but microbial populations that are proximate to antimicrobial events. The normal bacteria that live in humans and animals become a kind of commensal ‘reservoir’ of resistance genes (Landecker 2015) Because resistance genes travel around together like gangs, the treatment of an individual with a given antibiotic creates selective pressure with the effect of making both pathogenic and commensal bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics in addition to the one used in treatment (Levy 1998). There are more multi-drug resistant pathogens because of this increase in frequency and distribution of resistance genes across bacteria in general . The application of antibiotics or antimicrobials intended to eliminate localised pathogens can be considered an environmental event, whose effects extend well beyond the site of treatment. This is particularly true for indoor environments where the use of antimicrobials is high and the flow and exchange of matter with external, more biodiverse ecologies is low. In a household where an individual is taking antibiotics for an extended period, the commensal bacteria living in the household and bodies of occupants will have increased populations of antibiotic resistant bacteria (Levy 1998). In childcare centres and hospitals, where antibiotic and antimicrobial use is high, people carry higher loads of antibiotic resistant bacteria even if they are not being treated (Gillings and Stokes 2012). This means that localised interventions with antimicrobial molecules over decades become population-level reservoirs

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of resistance genes in human, animal, plant and other environmental commensal bacteria. The increasing prevalence of resistance genes within global ecological processes, including buildings, humans, animals, waste processing systems, water and soil forces a reconsideration of the best way to think about selective pressure and how organisms come to shape one another. The phenomena of horizontal gene transfer suggests that all genes in the microbial biosphere can be most usefully conceptualised as a shared resource pool that bacteria can draw on rapidly across distances (Stokes and Gillings 2011). The bridging of distances and hyperconnected material flows that enable this global pool to be accessed have been shaped by landscape modifications that serve the needs of the modern techno-capsule dweller: a life modality that demands manifold material inputs from industrial food and commodity production, and selective spatio-temporal purity. Antimicrobial resistance is a latent condition of the logic of environmental control that has structured modern industrial ecologies and their indoor biome: the identification and extermination of discreet ontologised substances. Hepler-Smith (2019) and Landecker (2015) point out that the way pathogenicity and toxicity have been conceptualised as properties of individualised substances, and the development of bureaucratic controls around them, has enabled pathogenic processes to form unnoticed. Resistance has ‘…flourished in blind spots generated by human categories of knowledge and action’ (Landecker 2019, 3). Knowing that both biology and matter have been shaped by prior ideas about how to control them, presents an imperative to reflect on what we think we know, and the things to which we should be paying attention. My contention here is, of course, that it is precisely the paying attention to things rather than processes that are at the heart of the logic of control that is now crumbling. Antibiotic resistance, low dose effects, and changing patterns of atopic and allergic disease are fracturing the dominant categories of analysis that have previously been used to decide what an organism or species is, and their relationship to genes, ecologies and other matter over time.

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The Flow of Genes and Processual Biology Horizontal gene transfer, and the problem of antimicrobial resistance more specifically, provide an urgent case for the abandonment of a substance ontology in conceptualisations of body-ecology relationships. The flow of genes between microbial bodies has profound conceptual implications for notions of immunity, individuality and bodily integrity (Blackman 2010). It was only once scientists stopped focussing on finding pathogens and started following the flow of plasmids and mobile genetic elements carrying antibiotic resistance markers that the spread of antibiotic resistance was able to be understood. The spatiotemporal processes of selective pressure and gene transfer through the common genetic pool of bacteria provide the most compelling way to conceptualise antimicrobial resistance. Once the integrity of the organism was challenged, many of the core tenets that make species legible and useful conceptual units for understanding biological systems and organisms were reduced. Horizontal gene transfer has played a central role in challenging the notion of species in what has been termed a ‘microbial turn’ in biology, and a related ‘environmental turn’ in microbiology. O’Malley and Dupre (2007) note that decades of heated philosophical discussion about systematics and concepts of species within biology had either failed to notice the microbial world or deliberately dismissed it. However, they propose, this is now changing, and the assumptions which have determined how species have been defined and categorised are being revised. The capacity for horizontal gene transfer in communities undermines the assumption that a single organism has a single genome, a term traditionally used to describe the genetic constitution of microbial communities and species. The body of evidence now supporting horizontal gene transfer has consequently raised important questions for the philosophy of biology, especially in relation to how biological individuality, evolution and the concept of species are understood. As noted in the Introduction, the philosophy of biology has been based on the central ontological categories of the individual organism and lineage, while populations are understood as being constructed out of individuals. Developments in microbial ecology have challenged this

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ontological status of microbial communities, and prompted questions concerning whether the community organism is a more helpful category than the individual organism (2007). Although communities may not possess the level of physiological integrity and boundaries that individual organisms do, the recent research cited above clearly suggests microbial communities are more than simply co-located individuals. If one positions a microbial system as more ontologically fundamental than its individual components, then its causal properties must be conceived of differently in relation to its influence on the micro- and macro-organisms involved (O’Malley and Dupré 2007). Taking these scientific developments seriously requires a philosophical standpoint that questions the organism-as-containerised-substance presumption of traditional biology. Microbial interactions do not adhere to categories that individuate life into discrete pieces, or the taxonomies that humans’ have built to classify it since the late nineteenth century. Rather, microbes show us explicitly that a processual understanding of what an organism is and does folds in many activities not able to be captured by static containers.

Conclusions This chapter has traversed some of the ways that the categorisation and localisation of pathogenicity and toxicity in discreet molecules has shaped not only our modern techno-capsules, but the landscapes and bodies of late industrial ecologies. The location of pathogenicity in germs conferred the illusion that an otherwise pure environment could be manipulated for the goals of industrial capitalism. It also made the convergent ecological processes that create pathogenic environments largely invisible. The transfer of this germ-logic to chemical toxicants—again portrayed as contaminants infecting pure substrates— led to systems of categorisation that presumed that if discreet molecules could be named and measured, hazardous contamination could be managed. Despite the cracks that have been emerging over the last 60 years, and the recognition of unaccountable phenomena such as low dose effects, the threshold concept and molecular substances have

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remained the primary ideas used to measure harm and address disease in environments and bodies by governments internationally. The late industrial indoor biome is in many ways the ultimate realisation of an antimicrobial logic: internationally generic techno-capsules, office buildings, airports and malls, have emerged as enclosures that convey the illusion of autonomous control and distinction from localised ecological variables. The emancipation of dwellings from locales via techno-control measures that seal the inside from out produced a particular regime of imperceptibility which not only hid the persistence of local environments in these spaces, but their contribution to new forms of pathogenic ecologies. This regime of imperceptibility has also concealed what Landecker calls the ‘biology of history’: ‘how human historical events and processes have materialized as biological events and processes and ecologies’ (Landecker 2015). The organisms that populate the Earth today are not the same as last century; the bacteria of today have different distributions and temporalities, but also different plasmids and ways of relating to one another and other organisms than bacteria prior to modern antimicrobials. The composition of Earth’s microbial life has been moulded by the climate-controlled conditions, food, moisture, airflows and antimicrobial compounds that make indoor ecologies. Similarly, bodies have been transformed by their encounters with chemical toxicants that are, for instance, mutagenic, carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting, and often produce heritable genetic modifications. The processes that have been enacted to control landscapes and create purified enclosures of human comfort are written into the genetics, physiology and ecological relations of organisms. Perhaps more than any other control strategy, antimicrobials embody the hope and the limitations of a substance ontology: the hope of humans exacting complete control over their environments. They have endured as the agents of environmental and bodily emancipation from disease. The persistence and extension of an antimicrobial logic have set in train a global game of ‘whack-a-mole’ against pathogens, antimicrobial resistant bacteria and chemical toxicants. Our inability to control these risks, and associated pathologies, such as atopic and allergic disease, via antimicrobial ‘seek and destroy’ practices is gradually undermining its foundational logic. As I have discussed, the prolific use of

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antimicrobials has given rise to at least three important phenomena that profoundly challenge the utility of ontologised substances: antimicrobial resistance, endocrine disruption and immune system diseases. These phenomena demand that one pays attention to the interaction of different processes in distinct temporal registers. As microbes train human immune systems to react differently through critical windows of development, the temporal patterning of chemical encounters primes the way bodies to respond to subsequent encounters. Likewise, the flow of resistance genes between microbial organisms changes what those organisms are and how they will be encountered in the future. In drawing attention to the misguided antimicrobial logic that has led to these phenomena, I do not mean to suggest that antibiotics should be abolished entirely and have no role to play maintaining the health of humans and other animals. Rather I suggest that they should be considered as a precious resource, only to be utilised under specific and controlled circumstances. The examples explored in this chapter also underscore the problems with treating material substances and cultures as distinct, autonomous realms. The biological matter of today, from bacteria to homo indoorus, has emerged through the cultural logics, modes of knowledge and modes of control that have produced late industrial landscapes (Landecker 2015); that is, modes grounded in the manipulation and control of ontologised substances. This is not to suggest that these landscapes are generic representations of global processes. Rather, that biosocial manifestations tell the stories of highly specific forms of localised experience and interaction over time, often exacerbating existing socio-economic disparities. A processes perspective that presents bodies and locales as sites at which cultural, biological and ecological processes together across many spatio-temporal scales—from the level of the gene to the globe—can begin to account unequally distributed pathogenic ecologies.

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5 A Relational Approach to Life Indoors

During the ‘modern parenthesis’ (Latour 2004) when, for many, culture had a conceptual holiday from nature, and subjects left their objects, the foundations were laid—literally and metaphorically—for vast indoor habitats. The modernist mindset is predicated on a world comprised of knowable, unchangeable substances. The population of the universe with these substances gave rise to invisible worlds that modernist cultures have lacked the abstractions to perceive. In this book I have traced how a substance ontology has contributed to categorisation practices that have enabled immense ecological modifications and supported the development of antimicrobial approaches to health and ecological management. Substance provided the basis for ontological medicine, through which the contemporary concepts of the ‘germ’ and medical immunity could emerge. The localisation of disease in specific substances, and the definition of these as essentially malignant, is predicated on a notion of environmental and corporeal purity. This purity ontology has been used to justify pernicious racism and eugenics, the upheaval of the urban poor, universally applied landscape modifications that have given rise to modern cities and agriculture, and the foundational categories for modern toxicology (Shotwell 2016; © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Wakefield-Rann, Life Indoors, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2_5

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Biss 2015; Nash 2006). The logic of modernist design—that perfectly mechanised sterile environments could keep invading pathogens and other contaminates at bay—has made local pathogen ecologies imperceptible and subjected colonising and colonised societies to vast landscape modifications. Nash reminds us that by ‘… separating bodies from environments and health from landscapes, germ theory helped underwrite ever greater environmental change without consideration for possible health effects’ (Nash 2008, 665). The encapsulation of human habitat into a multiplicity of connected yet distinct hyper-controlled enclosures, is an ultimate realisation of this modernist imperative. This spatio-temporally distinct foam (Sloterdijk 2016) of a habitat has brought unfamiliar processes into relation, from the molecular to the planetary scale, and provided unprecedented selective pressures for life. We are seeing the consequences of this vast reconfiguration of life and matter in late industrial pathogen ecologies, characterised by biodiversity decline, polluted air, land and water, antimicrobial resistance, the warming atmosphere and oceans, the rise in human inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, endocrine-related pathologies, among many others. The processes of late industrial bodies are the processes of urban encapsulation. As the great shift of humanity indoors accelerates, and the consolidation of urban encapsulation styles and practices—of technologically connected, climate controlled, spatially standardised and materially consistent urban apartments—amplifies, it is a critical time to ask, should we continue on this trajectory, or must the relations and classifications that are deemed relevant to the future of human habitation be radically revised? In the final chapter of this book, I explore some of the risks associated with maintaining reductive, substantialist abstractions, and the potential opportunities afforded by more relational modes of classification. I first look at some of the institutional attempts that have emerged to address the range of health issues associated with dwelling in higher density urban areas. While these attempts have responded effectively to a range of health determinants under significant material and bureaucratic constraints, I suggest that the persistent framing of health according to a

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specific set of bounded variables undermines the efficacy of these strategies. Specifically, these attempts are limited in their engagement with the contingency of exposure and harm, the role of everyday social practices in orienting flows of materials and bodies, and the influence of connected ecological processes. I then briefly turn to four examples of particular approaches within (but by no means exclusive to) medium to higher density residential development that is intended to address significant health and sustainability issues associated with the built environment: ‘zero’ carbon buildings, healthy buildings, pandemic safe design, and ‘circular’ buildings. While these movements, as currently construed, have reduced contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and the transmission of viruses, many of the normative elements of their designs continue to encourage practices that positively reinforce their occurrence. By continuing to focus on specific concrete entities as metrics for success, they continue to make other intersecting processes imperceptible. In the final section I return to practices of categorisation and abstraction to ask what more processual and relational classifications might look like, and to consider their potential implications for the way notions of bodies and dwellings could be situated within more encompassing assemblages of ecological flows. I finish by lightly tracing three examples of approaches that, while by no means perfect, illustrate what more processual modes of classification in the context of designing and planning for dwellings might look like.

Visions of Green and Healthy Buildings In this section I present four examples of movements affecting the development of urban dwellings with the explicit intention of making them healthier for occupants and/or more environmentally sustainable. Each represents a promising trend with great potential, which I suggest is at risk of being undermined through its continued reliance on substance-based classifications.

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Green Building and Carbon In Chapter 3 I discussed how buildings have been increasingly sealed in response to the additional electricity required to control the indoor climate of a leaky building. I will not rehash the indoor micro-ecological consequences of increasingly tight building envelopes, but I will reiterate the crucial role of standards in the creation of constraints which designers and engineers are then compelled to creatively work within and around. In the context of the built environment, these standards have traditionally pertained to safety, structural integrity, indoor temperature and humidity, pollution, noise, height, plumbing and many other categories of impact that have been layered into the process of building development over the last century. Over the last 15 years, carbon has become increasingly recognised, quantified, politicised and regulated as an agent of global warming. As the poster pollutant for climate change, the categories and standards that have emerged in response to the warming planet have focussed on the storage and release of this superstar element. Making the carbon that fuels our lives perceptible in a new register has been essential to the alteration of industrial processes to slow climate change. Part of the way this has been done is in the setting of low or ZERO Carbon targets and the use of ‘carbon footprint analysis’ from the regional to the building and product scales. These standards and evaluation practices have set new constraints around which buildings and objects are designed. While carbon is not the only sustainability metric against which buildings are evaluated, low or ZERO carbon has become a key criterion for much new building development. This has been driven by both commercial appetite and expectations, but also government policies intended to help achieve emissions reduction targets. For example, New York City (2019) mandated that buildings reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. By mandating a reduction in one entity without considering the flow on effects to others, and the processes they are part of, other problems can be created. Some of the key certification systems to become popular over the last 15 years have also began to account for other metrics, such as indoor air quality. However, these metrics still cannot account for the complex interactions that produce indoor ecologies and their external

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ecological effects. Since the green building movement began around 30 years ago, more metrics have been added that account for some Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) variables. The green building certification often considered best practice globally is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) administered by the US Green Building Council. From its inception in 1993 LEED has grown from a single standard applied to new construction to a comprehensive system of related standards accounting for the design, construction, maintenance and operation of buildings. In recognition of the limitations of the crude sustainability metrics that initially informed the certification, and some of the perverse outcomes they generate,1 the system now includes metrics for attaining IEQ credits for indoor air quality, levels of Volatile Organic Compounds, thermal comfort, lighting and even views. In their latest version, LEED v4.1, they have also included a Green Cleaning Policy (2020) which mandates: Purchasing sustainable cleaning, hard-floor and carpet products, and entryway systems; procuring sustainable cleaning equipment; developing and implementing standard operating procedures for effective cleaning; promoting and improving hand hygiene; developing guidelines for handling cleaning chemicals; developing staffing and employee training requirements; collecting and addressing occupant feedback; and establishing procedures for use of chemical concentrates and dilution systems.

However, measuring indoor environmental quality on the basis of the specific chemicals used in individual products is insufficient to determine their effects in practice. For example, indoor air scientists have found that bringing in ozone and other outdoor pollutants through ventilation often results in chemical reactions with many ‘green’ building materials and cleaning products, that may be equally as toxic as the toxicants they are replacing. For example, linoleum flooring and cleaning products containing essential oils are often considered to be more natural, however, they both react with ozone to form toxic compounds (Nazaroff and Weschler 2004). Though important for allocating sectoral responsibility for carbon emissions, concentrating on material flows without

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reference to the roles they play in everyday life, or to the history of these arrangements, produces an incomplete picture.

Healthy Buildings Around the time that Sick Building Syndrome came to be more commonly recognised as a real phenomenon in the 1980s, the role of building design in the health of occupants, beyond germ prevention, begun to be taken more seriously. The most explicit manifestation of this is the measurement of VOCs, radon and other specific emission metrics as part of an IEQ score. While these steps indicate health has come to be conceptualised more broadly than germ avoidance in the built environment, the notion of pathogenicity and toxicity as substance bound remains largely unchallenged in the classifications and standards that have emerged to improve the wellbeing of indoor occupants. Classification systems for healthy buildings were born out of the ‘green’ building movement. The industry leader, the WELL building standard, was launched in 2014 by the International Well Being Institute (IWBI) and was closely modelled on and designed to work with LEED. Rather than environmental sustainability, their focus is around ten key concepts related to human health in buildings including: air, water, nourishment, light, movement, thermal comfort, sound, materials, mind, and community. Allen and Macomber (2020) have pointed out that, like in LEED, attempts to grab the easy points could be seen early by companies hoping to achieve WELL certification through the strategic placement of the right artefacts in buildings, like treadmills and nutritious food. However, WELL has taken the additional step of recognising the role of performance and practices in the health of building occupants and even started to move away from a scorecard system of measurement. They claim to ‘…advance health by setting performance standards for design interventions, operational protocols and policies and a commitment to fostering a culture of health and wellness’ (WELL 2021). As a result, buildings are required to be re-certified every 3 years in order to maintain their performance-based accreditation.

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While this admirable move certainly edges closer to acknowledging that health is the product of interrelated material and social processes, the classification still ultimately relies on the presence of specific entities at the moment of assessment. The problem with defining health and sustainability risk as qualities of things—even if a range of use scenarios have been considered– is the inattention to the spatio-temporal patterning of practices. As I have mentioned elsewhere, some environmental health researchers have suggested that the axiom the ‘the dose makes the poison’ should be changed to ‘the timing makes the poison’ (Vogel 2008), to account for the importance of when and how often a person is exposed to EDCs in determining the potential for harm. Based on the discussion in Chapter 4, I suggest that it is not just timing, but a person’s entire, entangled ecological history: it is how one’s body has been trained to be in the world through its environment, that makes the poison. Bodies and their entanglement with ecological processes remain a conspicuous absence for assessments of health and sustainability in the built environment.

Pandemic Prevention Epidemics and pandemics throughout history have made relations between humans and their spaces newly legible. As I discuss in Chapters 2 and 3, water, food and dust were all apprehended in new ways after the epidemics of the nineteenth century. As evidence mounts around the role of enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces in the transmission of COVID 19, indoor air has become perceptible in new ways. Where indoor air was previously designed to be the right temperature, humidity and even fragrance, its rate of flow and exchange with outdoor air has now been added to the list of specified atmospheric characteristics commonly studied, beyond exceptional classification systems such as WELL and LEED. While not a complete return to the nineteenth/ early twentieth century obsession with fresh air, parallels can be drawn. The way this will play out in building, spatial and ventilation system design is yet to be fully determined, but early indications suggest that the interaction of viruses with indoor air and surfaces is not being adequately considered in

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ecological terms within public, design and public health discourses. This absense is despite emerging, but far from settled, research linking diverse ecological characteristics with transmission pathways and experiences of the virus. For example, the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) have expressed concern that the COVID 19 vaccines may be less effective in populations with high levels of exposure to PFAS chemicals—a class of fluorine-based synthetic chemicals used to make waterproof clothing, non-stick pans and numerous other everyday household objects (ATSDR 2020). This is because the chemicals affect the immune system and can reduce antibody responses. Similarly, long-term exposure to air pollution—fine particulate matter (PM 2.5)—is known to increase the danger associated with the biggest COVID 19 mortality risks: diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and asthma (Xiao et al. 2020). Pollution exposure can also make the immune system overreact, which has been a significant mortality factor in this pandemic. These compounding variables have remained marginal in mainstream reporting of pandemic prevention measures, despite their importance. As I have discussed at length in this book, infrastructures that have emerged over the past two centuries have created specific pathogen ecologies that have shaped the spaces in which human pathogens can emerge, move and connect with greatly dispersed hosts. These flows have also been made newly perceptible, as we see infected clusters emerging and trace the movement of the virus through the air from airports, to restaurants, to choir groups, to buses. Latent pathogenic pathways have suddenly been revealed. While the role of ecological interconnections has been highlighted by some commentators, particularly in relation to the animal-human interfaces, and conditions of poverty and land access that encourage viruses to jump from their animal to human hosts (see Tollefson 2020), urban ecologies have received little attention beyond some increased observation of the qualities of air. Indeed, the antimicrobial bombing of interior and bodily ecologies has increased with significant vigour. The importance of improving handwashing practices is indisputable, however, as I discussed in the previous chapter, the rise in use of personal care and cleaning products containing antibacterial compounds since COVID began, is not commensurate with evidence of the best ways to control pathogens.

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Some reporting on the implications of the pandemic for domestic design also suggests a move towards further indoor cocooning and attempts at spatialised immunity. One article in the design magazine Dezeen reports that the pandemic has reversed the trend for openplan living (Anderson 2021), while the German manufacturing company Vitra published a set of ‘hypotheses’ on the future of domestic living spaces, emphasising products that improve ‘retreat options’ and domestic acoustics, to further block out imposing outdoor influences (Barrett 2020). The presumed design trajectory seems to be heading towards further attempts at ‘inverted quarantine’(Szasz 2007) and retreat into the illusion that one can be sealed off from the world in an environment with ever more options for personalisation and exclusion from outside matter and other intrusions. The conceptual division between the environment ‘out there’ and the immunity bubbles we inflate for ourselves remain intact. One designer has framed the hygiene problem posed by COVID 19 as ‘how do we work with different populations and different cultural preferences to change behaviour on washing hands or social distancing?’ (Barrett 2020). By positioning the key preventative measures as increased ventilation, retreat options, social distancing, and handwashing, the crucial ecological processes that promote opportunistic pathogens remain imperceptible. The microbial ecologies of our skin (arguably our first corporeal line of immunity) and our homes are enduring new exposure regimens that are potentially increasing the pathogenicity, and certainly the toxicity of indoor environments. Research is also suggesting potentially significant links between antimicrobial use associated with COVID 19 and increases in the abundance of antimicrobial resistant bacteria (Hsu 2020).

A Circular Built Environment The circular economy has been evolving as a buzz concept for sustainable transformation over the past ten years. According to the commonly cited definition by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation (2020) ‘A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution,

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keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems’. The cycling of products and materials through multiple purposes and lives to avoid the extraction of new materials is at the heart of the circular philosophy. These principles have been adopted to guide the operations of many industries, from food and beverages, to small appliance, car and fashion industries. Substantial credits can be earned through LEED for using building materials with recycled content, including steel and concrete. The circular economy is often criticised for amounting to little more than a glossy new name for recycling that enables current rates of production and consumption to be maintained (Hawkins et al. 2019). As the concept has entered practice via existing institutions, practices and infrastructures, this is indeed often what it has amounted to. The most significant energy and investment has gone into new methods for pulling apart products in ways that retain the value of the component materials, rather than redesigning systems that reduce overall material throughput. I do not, however, agree that these issues are inherent to the concept of the circular economy. Rather, I suggest they are due to its operation within existing institutions and classification systems and without the necessary recognition of processual socio-material interactions that determine the consequences of what is circulated, when, how and how much. The concept of circularity has gained particular traction in the context of the built environment. According to the World Economic Forum, the engineering and construction industries consume more raw materials than any other industry (around 3 billion tonnes) and account for 50% of global steel production (WEF 2016). The circular economy of the built environment aims to utilise recycled materials to construct buildings and to consider the subsequent lives of buildings and their materials after their first intended use. The design features to emerge from this include modularity, design for disassembly and spatial multifunctionality. Interestingly, the circular economy is not just positioned as a project about creating closed loops; it explicitly claims to be focussed on ‘regenerating natural systems’. Where urban planners, architects and developers have considered this regenerative imperative, it has tended to emphasise the benefits of decreased resource extraction and pollution emissions, integrated water cycle management, the production of

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food within the urban landscape and the provision of green space for improved air quality, and sometimes the application of biosolids (treated sewage sludge) or composted food waste from cities to agricultural land (Ellen Macarthur Foundation 2020; Hart et al. 2019; Venegas et al., 2020). However, the practices and materials that generate indoor ecologies, and their effects on broader ecologies—such as their contribution to antimicrobial resistance, the toxicants that flow from dwellings through municipal waste, wastewater and biosolids, and their transformation of human immune systems—remain a conspicuous absence from these initiatives. While a more circular built environment will be essential for the future of the ecosystems we depend upon, it risks creating new processes that will increase the pathogenicity and toxicity of our dwelling environments if not approached carefully. As I discussed in Chapter 4, the materiality of late industrial societies is characterised by complex assemblages of rare earth and heavy metals, plastics and other synthetic materials that give techno-capsules their key affordances and connect them via technological umbilical cords to a global infrastructural matrix. The batteries, wires, microchips, cables, screens, fuses, pipes and innumerable other materials in buildings all necessitate a mangle of toxicant loaded composites that will precipitate a cascade of both predictable and unknown outcomes for bodies and ecosystems if they are blindly cycled into subsequent lives in new material and biological configurations. The current inability of molecular bureaucracy to accommodate the ways compounds and organisms metamorphose as they traverse socio-material practices and technologically enabled global networks will be amplified as circular flows increase (Hepler-Smith 2019). A number of strategies have been proposed to begin to account for what is circulated and what should not be, and a number of early warnings have emerged. The discovery of toxic brominated flame retardants in plastic children’s toys, hair accessories, and kitchen utensils made from recycled electronic waste plastics set off alarm bells in the EU in 2018 (Straková et al. 2018). However, the proposed methods of control still rely on being able to trace discreet, consistent, already identified substances throughout their lives, such as labelling, digital tracing and material ‘passports’. This problem is immensely challenging

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and these attempts at tracing are commendable, but cannot account for all the necessary interactive, relational transformations that compounds assembled for a very specific purpose will undergo and trigger in their multitude of lives. If these interactions are considered, attention can be shifted to those producing toxic compounds in the first place, and the conversation can be refocused on what compounds and materials should be eliminated all together. One of the most prescient and concerning examples of unintended circulation is reported in recent research estimating that around 3700Mt of plastics are applied to agricultural land in Australia each year through biosolids, and 140Mt into landscape topsoil. This means about 200g of plastic per person each year becomes part of the soil and alters its ecology (Okoffo et al., 2020). Wastewater treatment facilities receive plastics via multiple pathways, including landfill, stormwater and industrial effluents, but the authors particularly emphasise the role of domestic practices: The use of plastics in household products has resulted in their ubiquitous detection in wastewater streams worldwide; plastic-containing products enter wastewater through normal household cleaning and washing, contributing synthetic fibers from washing clothes, plastics from personal care and cosmetic products, and abrasive plastic particles from cleaning agents. (Okoffo et al. 2020, 1)

Notwithstanding its other limitations, molecular bureaucracy does not have the means to account for the everyday indoor (or indeed outdoor) practices that structure patterns of resource demand, which guide the extraction, reconfiguration and flow of resources into homes. It is also unable to account for how the spatio-temporal rhythms of everyday life throw these materials into a concert that continuously transforms indoor ecologies. By the time we come to consider the material outputs or wastes that flow from the home, the matter is so transmuted that we must question the value of following the original molecules without considering other contextualising factors. I do not mean to suggest that a system that abstracts molecules for the purpose of universal legibility is not helpful or indeed necessary, but that it should not be taken as a picture of reality, or

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used without other approaches that attend to more relational variables. It is only via such approaches, I suggest, that responsibility for change can be adequately assessed.

Probiotic Practices As I have discussed at length over the past two chapters the design of houses, home appliances and cleaning products commonly hold both explicit and latent antibacterial orientations. This is not, however, to suggest that other conceptions of microbes are not operative. Narratives about ‘good dirt’ and being ‘too clean’ have penetrated everyday thinking about microbes, and increasingly product marketing. Growing media engagement with the significance of the human microbiome for numerous aspects of human health are now presenting a strong counter narrative to germaphobia (Lorimer et al. 2019). Research in countries across the world has documented various actions by communities and individuals that aim to cultivate mutually beneficial relations with microorganisms. These include the use of probiotic dietary supplements and cleaning products (Greenhough et al. 2018), and the continuation and re-emergence of practices such as food and beverage fermentation (Dolejsova and Kera 2017). There has also been increased public acceptance of medical procedures such as faecal microbial transplants for certain conditions, which take the microbes from a healthy person and transfer them into a patient with a chronic health condition (Mackowiak 2013). Although this recent reputation rehabilitation for microbes has certainly expanded public thinking about their role in human bodies in some communities, it has not erased germaphobia or the prevailing antimicrobial ontology. Rather, research into the way that people think about their homes and the microbes within them often tells a story of contradiction and confusion. In my own research into the domestic hygiene practices of parents with young families in Australia, there was a sense that children should not be ‘too clean’ and that they should be spending time in the ‘dirt’, but that hardwood and tiled floors, for example, should be sterilised multiple times per day (Wakefield-Rann

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et al. 2018). Most of the time the use of antimicrobials and other products that have a significant influence over the indoor ecology were bound up with the performance of daily practices, such as preparing dinner or getting ready for work. Similar findings are reflected in other research into domestic cleaning practices around the world (Jack 2017; Fasulo et al. 2007). In addition to the persistence of an antimicrobial sensibility in many normative practices, an antimicrobial logic—of a pure, normal system infected by bad actors—can also be observed in many explicitly probiotic practices. As one may hunt down and eliminate unwanted microbes, one may isolate and emplace ‘good’ ones. Perhaps many of us have observed this logic in people who consume a diet full of processed foods that can cause gastrointestinal problems, and then consume probiotic yoghurt in the hope of restoring a good, helpful gut microbiome. This is tantamount to dropping troops into a warzone, but not providing them with any gear or food: the soldiers will quickly die out without a supportive environment. This way of thinking about microbial agency and interaction inevitably causes confusion, as people are understandably unsure where these good and bad microbes reside and how to manage them, often leading to a default position of killing as many as possible with antimicrobials, just to be safe. The tendency to designate particular microbes or chemicals as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ has emerged consistently in research since the advent of germ theory; a designation that necessitates a concept of an essentialised substance. Nancy Tomes (1997) explains how moral characteristics and judgements were central to the Victorian naturalists’ characterisation of the natural world; lions were noble, wolves savage, and disease-causing microorganisms were ‘bad’, and often ‘cunning’ or ‘murderous’, while those that helped in the production of butter were ‘good’. Although generally no longer described in such colourful terms, the idea of microbes having a consistent, essential character has persisted, as I discuss in Chapter 2. This can be observed in findings from recent studies, including the aptly named ‘Good Germs, Bad Germs’ project in the UK (Lorimer and Hodgetts 2017). The retention of the notion of microbes as discreet substances positions them as ‘others’ that are either working for or against us, depending on their nature. However, as I note in

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Chapter 3, the pathogenicity of a particular microbe is often dependant on the role it adopts within a microbial ecology, based on the existing system dynamics; much like the way a blackberry bush is a pernicious weed in Australia, but an innocuous hedge plant in England. Even in cases where certain microbes are generally ‘bad’, their pathogenicity is still most helpfully conceptualised as an emergent property of the broader ecological processes that produce it (Méthot and Alizon 2015). If we accept this, probiotic practices enacted under the auspices of recolonising spaces or bodies with generically ‘good’ microbes, may be equally inclined to misguided interventions and perverse outcomes as antibiotic practices. Heather Paxson (2014, 116) refers to the emergence of post-Pasturean cultures, which ‘…move beyond an antiseptic attitude to embrace mould and bacteria as potential friends and allies’, in contrast to a Pasturean perspective that advocates the suppression of microbial life to promote human health. While she claims a post-Pasturean ethos has many positive instantiations, such as in artisanal cheese and beer production, she also presents a cautionary tale of probiotic zealousness, whereby groups of people have begun to overestimate and even glorify microbial life as the source of all natural goodness in food, and consequently advocate for unmitigated microbial freedom and the disabling of all microbial control. I am not intimating that greater indoor microbial stewardship is unimportant. Aside from these extreme cases, there are a number of ecologically oriented probiotic movements that apply to both microbes and the ‘rewilding’ of landscapes with larger organisms, such as beavers and wolves, that serve important functions in maintaining certain ecological outcomes or ‘services’ (See Lorimer 2020). The literature also suggests several interventions that may have some success at reducing exposures to harmful pathogens indoors and at increasing exposures to beneficial microbes. These include increasing outdoor ventilation rates, altering the type and efficiency of air filtration, employing more targeted air, water and surface disinfection strategies, and promoting indoor exposures to beneficial microorganisms (a strategy known as ‘environmental probiotics’) (Wang et al. 2013; Meadow et al. 2014; Caselli et al. 2016). The latter concept has been explored in the context of the proposed

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use of probiotics in cleaning practices in home and hospital environments, (Caselli et al. 2016; Velazquez et al. 2019) in pathogen control in plumbing systems (Wang et al. 2013), and in the microbial rewilding of urban areas (Mills et al. 2017). There has also been some very promising early research into the use of ‘biodiversity interventions’ to encourage more diverse human microbiota for urban dwellers. One study in Finland investigated the effects of moving the first layer of highly biodiverse forest floor—literally scooping it up and transplanting it—into preschools (Roslund et al. 2020). The children were then encouraged to interact with the soil and plants containing the bacteria, while the changes in their skin and gut microbiota and blood immune markers were measured. Findings suggested that the children’s immunoregulatory pathways were significantly strengthened through the intervention. While these studies are certainly cause for great excitement, the benefits incurred through such interventions risk being undermined by the continued enactment of antimicrobial practices alongside probiotic ones. Much like the consumption of yoghurt to improve the gut microbiome, probiotic strategies will also only be effective if they are supported by the right type of ecological stewardship, and not undermined by antimicrobial practices, including those embedded in buildings and urban planning. It will not only be essential to remove specific antimicrobial compounds, but to consider the multitude of traces that the logic of germs have in everyday infrastructures and practices, from legacy contaminants in soil and other materials, to the way one’s body might feel uncomfortable unless the kitchen benches are shiny, how one feels remiss in their duties as a parent if there are smudges on the floorboards, or how the spatial affordances of the home do not allow for airflow and fragranced air ‘fresheners’ are required to make the space feel clean and comfortable. It is also imperative to consider the materials brought into the house through the multitude of production processes and ecologies, from pesticide-covered food, to PFAS-laden cookware, furniture and electronics, all of which modulate how, where and if particular microbial communities survive and evolve. Without a deeper questioning of the abstractions and categories that arrange practices according to

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substances, probiotic practices risk being co-opted into or diminished by the prevailing regime of an antimicrobial substance logic.

Processual Approaches to Dwelling I want to repeat, just one more time, that abstractions are necessary to understand the world; the problem is not that a substance is an abstraction that is not real, but that this particular abstraction is not up to the explanatory work it is now being asked to do. Also, like many classification systems, over time abstractions become mistaken for actual things. Perhaps the most compelling argument for the adoption of new classification systems based on processes is their wide explanatory scope. Process philosophy is not only able to account for things that appear as stable, but for all kinds of occurrences or entities in ways that acknowledge their position in relation to others in time and space ‘…from quantum entanglement to consciousness, from computation to feelings, from things to institutions, from organisms to societies, from traffic jams to climate change, from spacetime to beauty’ (Seibt 2020). To do this, one must begin by asking what alternative categorisation practices may be more appropriate, and what they look like. Prior to attempting some suggestions, it is important to note that new abstractions will never emerge onto a blank slate or operate in apolitical space. All new categories and abstractions are brought into dialogue with both the latent and explicit classification practices that came before, including the interests they served, and the infrastructures built to support them. As this dialogue relates to what will be made visible, what is taken for granted, who has knowledge, and what relations are important, it is inherently political. Bowker and Starr (1999) explain that the intention behind the development of classification systems is to regularise the movement of information from one context to another, providing a means of accessing information across time and space. This process always involves a negotiation around what should and should not remain visible and how things are depicted and abstracted. These negotiations generally reflect existing

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power structures and categorsation conventions and practices. Importantly, they note that once classification systems are in place, all of this practical politics and deliberation, all of the other potentials that were dismissed, become invisible. The infrastructures built to support classifications are then utilised well beyond the time everyone has forgotten the decisions that made them. It is only through keeping this politics visible and designing classification systems to be flexible and responsive to new institutional arrangements and knowledge that mistaking categories for reality can be avoided. As I describe below, process philosophy may help enable this. Although it is vital to attend to the politics of classification, and the challenges associated with altering categories that are deeply embedded within infrastructures and bureaucracies, everyday practical wisdom, and complex systems that no one group has agency over, it is also important to speculate about what type of system might be more adequate, and what that might look like. For any challenge to the current politics of categorisation to be effective, the rudder must be pointed in the right direction. In the sections that follow I begin by looking at some of the suggestions for how certain phenomena may be usefully re-categorised as processes and the implications of this move. I then turn to some of the epistemological and methodological approaches that may be instructive in reorienting investigations of how dwellings and modes of dwelling come to be categorised as healthy or sustainable. Within a substance ontology, things are categorised according to their presumed boundaries—if we recall the babushka doll metaphor of a containerised universe in which atoms-as-things, are stacked to make ever larger objects. A processual ontology necessarily does away with these boundaries, but in order to be useful it requires alternate tools and ways of individuating phenomena—at least for the duration of the given investigation. It is commonly suggested that one way to set new boundaries to help individuate processes is according to the particular phenomena one wants to understand (Hertz et al. 2020; Nicholson and Dupré 2018). For instance, when considering a community of microorganisms in a biofilm and their genetic history, it may be beneficial to conceptualise them as multiple processes in one, whereas as something like immunity may be more usefully conceptualised as a united system, depending on

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the specific question. Another way of framing this is that processes are classified according to what they are ‘doing’ in a given situation under investigation. While it may seem disorderly to move away from uniform answers to questions regarding what bodies are (for example), question and issue-based modes of categorisation may offer equally ordered systems for answering important questions, while keeping the practical politics of classification visible and alive. Dupre (2012) has termed this more pluralistic—but in no way relativistic—approach to classification as ‘promiscuous individuation’, arguing that the boundaries drawn around biological objects are primarily a matter of specific human goals anyway, and that there are many ways of drawing such boundaries that are equally valid in their capacity to explicate the systems that make up the world. A clear advantage of this approach is that it forces a type of reflexivity around what ideas and motivations inform the boundary setting in each instance. Nicholson and Dupre (2018) claim that this type of classificatory pluralism has already become well accepted among philosophers of biology. The other conceptual category that may aid in more processual classification approaches is the ‘event’. While the use of the term varies, based on Whitehead’s conception, process philosophers often conceive of events as the integration of processes as ‘experienced’2 by a subject— not necessarily a human or conscious one—at a specific spatio-temporal moment. An organism can be conceptualised as a series of repetitive events over a certain period of time, brought about by a series of processes stabilised on a particular timescale. In this sense, if we want to understand how bathing influences the human microbiome, for example, a showerhead can be usefully categorised as an event. It is the culmination of the material histories of its constituent parts, it is the water that runs through it, it is the embodied skills of the people along its supply chain, it is the biofilms that have formed based on the water that has moved through it that day, and those preceding, the material food it provides the microbes and the temperature of the bathroom, and it is the history of cultural conventions around sanitation that have deemed showering to be the optimal route to a hygienic body. The human body—another event—then experiences the event of the showerhead in that moment, and all the processes that have come to constitute it. Similarly, an allergic

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sneeze experienced by a person could be conceptualised as an event. In doing this, the allergic response can cease to be bounded by the immune system of the organism, and contextualised according to the manifold, integrated cultural and biophysical processes, across spatiotemporal scales. The use of processes and events, individuated according to what they do within the phenomena under investigation, allows one to adapt the concepts with which one reasons to understand what is happening in a given context. There are striking parallels between this epistemological approach focussed on what processes do and many Indigenous cosmologies. In an examination of the shared aspects of research conducted by Indigenous scholars in Australia and Canada, Cree Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson (2008, 73) highlights that relationality is at the core of their ontology and epistemology: ‘relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality’. An important implication of this cosmology is that things do not become disembedded from processes and relationships. Wilson (2008, 73) further explains: That the English language requires but one word to describe something (a noun or pronoun), but many words to describe its use, reveals that the underlying importance is placed on the singular object or reality, rather than on multiple realities or upon one’s relationships.

This perspective shares much with what Nicholson and Dupre advocate when calling for classifications based upon what processes do. While I do not pretend to fully, or even really partially, comprehend Indigenous cosmologies, it strikes me that their emphasis on relationality, and its implications for the obligations and responsibilities people have to the more-than-human ecologies they are part of, compliments a proposition such as Nicholson and Dupre’s. I will return to the implications of foregrounding obligation and responsibility later in the chapter. I realise that these suggestions for alternative categorisation practices are still rather abstract, so I endeavour in the following sections to highlight some methodological approaches that may go some way to more helpful conceptualisations of the processes that constitute techno-capsule dwelling, and its relationship to human and broader ecological health.

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Biosocial Practices and Life Indoors To understand how indoor ecologies within techno-capsules come to be configured in certain ways, investigating what I am calling ‘biosocial practices’ may be helpful. Indoor lifestyles, in many respects, configure the dance of life and matter that build and sustain indoor ecologies. As I discussed in Chapter 3, changing lifestyles influence how houses are designed and what they are considered to be for. Before I discuss my inclusion of the term ‘biosocial’, I want to briefly say something about practices. To understand the socio-material processes that constitute indoor ecologies I suggest it will be necessary to attend to the normative practices that bring them into play. Sociologists of consumption and sustainability began to focus around 20 years ago on how high amounts of per capita energy and water use in wealthy nations are primarily associated with what Shove and Warde (2002) have called ‘inconspicuous consumption’—the consumption of resources through the enactment of everyday practices, such as bathing, cooking dinner, commuting etc.— and how these practices are subject to change over time as cultural conventions and material configurations shift. ‘Practices’ is a nebulous term that can mean many things, but here I follow these sociologists in referring to them as the repeated performance of certain groupings of ideas and meanings, materials, infrastructures, corporeal knowledge and embodied sensing that constitute everyday life (Schatzki 2016; Warde 2005; Hui et al. 2017).3 These practice ‘elements’ do not exist prior to but are entirely constituted by one another. The practice concept is valuable for thinking about processes enacted at the spatio-temporal scale of everyday life because it attends to how and why normative activities and meanings are enacted by groups at different places and times. Importantly, it attends specifically to the spatio-temporal rhythms and pattering of everyday life, and its co-constitutive cultural, material and corporeal processes. Practices become a useful abstraction through which to think about the processes that make up socio-material life when we focus on the practices that are normative and collectively held at a particular place and time, and how they emerge, persist and disappear. This is not to suggest

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that there is not always individual variation, but that collective conventions and infrastructures have power over collective actions. For example, bathing for many in nineteenth century England commonly involved splashing one’s hands, face, armpits, and crotch from a water basin in the bedroom. While today for the modern techno-capsule dweller in Sydney, bathing might involve a morning shower in hot water using a shower gel, shampoo and conditioner—each of which provides the desired tactile and olfactory indicators of freshness, cleanliness, softness and silkiness required for one to feel clean and meet the aesthetic standards of the workplace. This modern practice necessitates products that are formulated to work within the flow of water, while not leaving a chalky residue on tiles, in addition to invoking all the required mental and corporeal affects required to induce a sense of ‘feeling right’ for the day. If one were to simply replace a shower gel product with, for example, a less toxic version that did not lather, did not smell fresh and left a residue in the shower, it would likely be abandoned. The fact that these practices are enacted by a significant portion of a population are what gives them their explanatory power. From a processual perspective, all events are comprised of all that came before them. This presupposition is also central to the use of practices as a unit of analysis. This is evident in a typology of entities devised by the sociologist Elizabeth Shove (2017, 156) according to what they do within a practice: I start by considering three roles that things can play in practice. Some things are necessary for the conduct of a practice, but are not engaged with directly. I suggest these have an ‘infrastructural relation’ to practice. A second category includes things that are directly mobilised and actively manipulated. I count these as ‘devices’. Third, there are things which are used up or radically transformed in the course of practice and that figure as ‘resources’.

This type of categorisation is not only relationally oriented to the roles that these entities play in practices, but is intended to help one to think about scale, and when and how the status of things change from, for example, device-oriented relations to infrastructural relations.

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Using the prescient example of the construction of a house, Shove takes us through the way a house is built with a particular power supply and scaffolding, which provide the infrastructural features for things that are mobilised and manipulated to transform resources through the construction process (devices), and that the final configuration of the house, including its size, insulation, aspect, and windows provide an infrastructural role with relation to processes of heating the room. The way the room is heated is also related to standards and expectations of thermal comfort and what someone what might want to do in that room, for example, relax in front of the television. I would add to this the multitude of transformations that are occurring at the micro-ecological scale of the building, from the ecologies in which the building materials were forged (cf. the example in Chapter 4 of fungus embedded in plasterboard), or the selective pressure on microbes created through indoor antimicrobial use. Shove emphasises that this method for distinguishing between material relations highlights the ways in which ‘…paths of action are successively and repeatedly qualified’ (2017, 161). This attention to preceding processes and the relations that determine what processes (or in her terminology, things) do in a practice, helps one conceptualise how certain practice configurations may be reinforcing particular patters of resource use, or a specific pathogen ecology. Moreover, specific attention to the processes that effect the emergence, persistence, collapse, and transformation of practices is central to understanding why some interventions are more effective than others. A significant portion of indoor practices involve measures to actively manage microbes, whether through refrigeration or the application of antimicrobial products. Cooking, cleaning, bathing and laundering all involve implicit or explicit antimicrobial processes. These practices (as opposed to single chemicals or products) have been linked with the changing micro-ecologies of buildings (Thaler 2016; Velazquez et al. 2019; Notman 2020). In addition to acts conducted to specifically eliminate potential germs, many practices are enacted to create a sense of cleanliness and make an environment feel right, such as the use of fragranced candles, which often emit toxicants into the air. My own field research has also indicated that women, and particularly mothers, in Australia are expected to juggle many competing practices without

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letting hygiene standards slip, resulting in attempts to find the most efficient ways to make a space feel clean and fresh. Products such as toilet ‘discs’ that release disinfectant whenever flushed, and Roomba vacuum cleaners offer to disburden individuals from some of their cleaning load (Wakefield-Rann et al. 2018). Ease of cleaning was also a significant determinant of interior material selections for my participants who had the financial means, with many replacing carpets with hardwood floors due to their perceived superior cleanliness. Hardwood floors tended to be cleaned with specifically formulated antibacterial products, whenever their smooth, glossy surface was disturbed by a mark or the feel of grit underfoot. In some cases, this resulted in the application of antibacterial products multiple times a day. On the other hand, carpet is generally not cleaned with antibacterial products, and those made with wool even have the capacity to absorb some atmospheric toxicants. The perception that carpet is unclean is often exacerbated by the increasing prevalence of allergies to dust mites, which as we now know, is likely to be linked to the immunity training that many indoor humans have undergone. By focussing on everyday practices I do not suggest that responsibility for change should be further placed on the shoulders of individuals. Rather, all human action and interaction can be usefully understood in terms of their practices, and the interplay of their co-constituted material, affective, corporeal, cultural and cognitive elements. The practices that contribute to changing expectations of cleanliness and comfort are not restricted to households, they include the practices of advertising executives, building developers, regulators, product manufactures and other agents all of whom have ideas, materials and bodily knowledge informing how they, for example, decide to sell a cleaning product, or what to prioritise in the process of developing an apartment block. The design practices that determine the fonts, colours, claims and shape of a detergent bottle, intermingle with the practices of fragrance engineers in the construction of freshness, which then cross paths with the practices of flooring manufacturers—that ensure the correct chemicals are applied to achieve the right level of gloss, durability and colour—when this detergent is used to mop the floor. The practices of these people, then intersect with the practices associated with making a home that fulfils all of the cultural expectations bound up with that concept. These

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practices all occur, of course, in relation to the practices of corporate elites and industry executives, whose daily lives are structured around making decisions that will generate profit, and those responsible for the day-to-day governance of states in late industrial societies. While highly distributed, a key site at which we can begin to explore how these diverse processes operate, is where they meet within the interplay indoor practices. It is through looking at the continual reconfiguration of materials, ideas, emotions and bodies through the entanglement of practices, that we can begin to gain a sense of how causal power and consequence may be followed. It is here that I want to return to the biosocial character of practices. The term ‘biosocial’ has had many definitions across disciplines (Meloni et al. 2016), but I use it here to denote the intertwining of social and biological processes that have been divided within more bifurcated epistemologies. By using this term, one can hope to get away from the trappings of both biological or genetic determinism and pure social constructionism. In taking a biosocial approach to the investigation of practices, we can attend not only to interactions between materials and meanings, but the ways in which these processes share and are shaped by biological processes. In the words of geographer Alison Hayes Conroy (2017, 52), it prompts the question ‘What methods might be used to trace the environment into the body and the body into the environment?’. I suggest that this tracing is not only a valuable task, but an essential one for any attempt to reform practices of dwelling. To illustrate the importance of attending to biophysical processes as inextricably linked to cultural ones, I return to the example of bathing. The practice of cleaning oneself is made up of ideas and meanings about how one should look and smell and what it means to be clean. The acts of deliberation that are central to these practices involve sensory evaluations based on how one’s senses have been ‘trained’ to like or dislike particular fragrances, textures, etc. over a lifetime of exposure to specific infrastructures and material processes. In my own research into the visceral and sensory aspects of everyday practices, vanilla was a consistently divisive scent (Wakefield-Rann et al. 2019). Some participants loved and would always seek vanilla scented cleaning products, while others had a strong visceral aversion to them. Martin (2013, 162)

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uses the example of vanilla to highlight how responses to scent often combine individual and culturally shared episodic memories accumulated over the lifecourse: ‘The scent of custard may send one person into a vanilla-induced orgiastic frenzy and to another, send her to the school dinner table, inside from the rain, a prelude to detested instruction’. He notes that while there may be identifiable classes of odours that elicit similar responses in people, such as faeces smelling unpleasant and flowers smelling attractive, the individual nature of our responses is shaped through our particular life experiences. One reason for the diversity of responses to vanilla is likely linked to its circuitous trajectory through various industries. In Rain’s (2004) cultural history of vanilla, she traces how the scent transformed from its use in incense in sixteenth century Mesoamerica to diverse consumer product categories, from ice cream to floor cleaners, due to specific developments in the flavour and fragrance industries. The diversity of associative opportunity vanilla affords, and its manifestation in different applications in across locations, reinforce the need to acknowledge how specific environments and developments in the industries responsible for manufacturing and distributing products have a significant role in training the senses. Similarly, if we recall the discussion of thermal comfort in Chapter 3, we can see that expectations of how hot or cold one should feel are partially contingent on the conditions one’s body has been exposed to. This then influences how, when and why air-conditioners and heaters, for example, are used. In addition to preferences and aversions, the body’s prior biophysical exposures within the ecologies they have participated in also influence how one might react to different practice configurations. As I discussed in Chapter 3, the immune system undergoes a type of training via its ecological exposures, which can play a role in the development of allergies and other immune disorders. If we consider someone who has developed a sensitivity to soaps and detergents—common in sufferers of eczema—it is likely they conduct certain sensory evaluations of those materials. For example, they may be able to smell or feel that a soap will be too harsh for their skin and attempt to achieve the same sense of feeling clean after bathing with other products. Similarly, it is possible someone with an allergy to dust mites will begin sneezing in response to their presence prior to observing any dust, prompting a more rigorous

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and frequent cleaning regime, which in turn shapes the ecology of the building. The biosocial ecologies of dwellings are therefore never settled, but constantly co-constructing one another. While indoor material ecologies train bodies, bodies—through their practices—shape the biomaterial constitution of indoor environments as a continuous process. Attending to biosocial practices may help to trace and link some of the key processes contributing to elements of late industrial pathogen ecologies, such as antimicrobial resistance, within indoor ecologies. The antimicrobial sensibility of common everyday practices is bound not only to cognitive and cultural dispositions, but the multiple processes that link proxies for hygiene with the senses and cultural meanings at particular places and times. Burgess-Watson (2019) and colleagues highlight that preferences for, and sensory evaluations of, consumer products are tuned by the systems of industrial production that our senses are now commonly trained within, in combination with personal affective associations. Their research stresses that for people who have developed their flavour palette and preferences on a diet of highly processed food, attempts to convince them to eat fresh, sustainably grown produce consistently fails to change their food practices. This is because these strategies do not address the ways in which peoples’ senses have been tuned by a complex interplay of food production practices, family cooking and purchasing practices, associations between food and memory, among many others. Similarly, to understand the normative use of antimicrobial products as part of the practices of constructing and maintaining dwellings, the sensory aspects of the broader systems of production need to be understood. For example, my research in Australia indicated it is common to associate hygiene with synthetic scents of lemon and pine, and product packaging that claims to ‘kill 99% of germs’ (Wakefield-Rann et al. 2019). Investigations of how bodies become tuned by the broader economic, political and industrial ecologies of which they are part, must also be considered if probiotic practices, such as biodiversity interventions, are to be effective. In addition to the domestic practices of occupants, understanding linked systems—agricultural practices that rely on antibiotics, building and furniture design practices that imbue paints, fabrics and building materials with antimicrobials—will also be necessary for more ‘circular’

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or ‘green’ building practices to promote indoor ecological health. Interrogating these practices will involve attending to the processes of knowledge transfer and decision making, of chemical tracing along supply chains, of understanding user demand with regard to how products to look and feel, and how cost influences material decisions. Perhaps more importantly, it will be important to understand the ways in which the biosocial practices of designers, manufacturers and builders are constrained by the biosocial practices of the regulators that create and maintain the standards mandating that an antimicrobial logic is embedded within products, and the categorisations of the world that underpin them. Like low carbon and circular building practices, regulatory practices shape the world according to the abstractions they use to understand it and what they make perceptible. To effectively investigate and understand the role of biosocial practices in normative modes of dwelling and their contribution to specific pathogen ecologies, methodologies that attend to the cumulative and interactive spatio-temporal aspects of practices are needed. While far from encompassing, methodologies that combine the study of the flow of everyday practices and ‘exposomic’ approaches, may provide one avenue to better understand the dynamics that have shaped the ecological patterns of exposure in a given place. There is now a well-developed sociology and geography scholarship addressing how to research everyday practices. In general, they involve following groups of people as they carry out their daily lives while attending to the dynamic interplay of materials, infrastructures, affect, meanings and corporeal skills and knowledge in a specific place, the temporal patterning of these dynamics and how they change over time (See Pullinger et al. 2013; Blue 2013; Pettersen 2009; Kuijer and De Jong 2011). While these approaches value the role of corporeal knowledge, they are not generally biosocial in the sense of attending to how bodies are trained through ecological interactions. They also do not generally investigate processes that are not explicitly ‘carried’ by humans, for example, the practices of microbes sharing genes in a showerhead. I propose that the biosocial nature of practices suggests the value of extending investigations of practice by combing it with an exposomic approach to researching their processual effects in indoor ecologies.

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As I discuss in Chapter 4, the term ‘exposome’ has come to be used to denote the culmination of every exposure of an individual over their life (Wild 2005). Exposures are grouped as: internal exposures (internal bodily processes); specific external exposures (pollutants, diet, and pathogens); and general external exposures (the broader causes of health, such as social and economic forces) (Jacquez et al. 2015; Wild 2012; Prior et al. 2019). This mode of thinking marks a departure from other modes of assessing hazard and risk as it does not focus on the source of the pollution, but looks at the body or ecology affected by it. Arthur Daemmrich (2008) suggests this type of approach, and the biomonitoring practices used to assess exposure, can shift the way risk and hazard are defined within regulatory frameworks in two important ways. First, chemical regulation shifts from focussing on physical location to chemical reaction, and second, risk begins to be defined based on the presence of compounds in a body, rather than as a function of exposure to chemicals. This switch enables one to consider how exposures act additively and interactively as bodies encounter different processes and pathways of exposure, rather than reductively investigating each exposure alone. Put in processual terms, by conceptualising the body at a moment in time as an event at which multiple processes at different spatio-temporal scales are meeting, one can begin to trace these processes outside of the immediate exposure context, to understand how it fits within larger infrastructures, production systems and everyday routines and practices. In using the exposomic concept, the same warning should be heeded as for the post-pastureans or circular builders: if the things being followed are reduced to essentialised substances, many important processes will be missed. While acknowledging their potential value, exposomic approaches have been criticised for perpetuating the framing of risk and harm in an exclusively molecular register—the idea that if a specific molecule cannot be followed and associated with a specific effect, nothing noteworthy happened. The molecular measurement of exposure also tends to zero in on a single signal from a specific particle which maintains what Murphy (2004, 267) has called ‘…a learned inattention to other noise’. Health sociologist Laura Senier and colleagues (2017) highlight parallels between the direction exposome research may be heading and other recent technoscience practices that have claimed the

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capacity to transform biomedical science, particularly genomic medicine and the promises of personalised medicine that accompanied the Human Genome Project (HGP). When it was realised at the end of the HGP in 2003 that the identification and association of specific genes with pathologies would not rapidly eliminate a multitude of disorders as promised, there were initial hints that the complexity and contingency of gene-environment interactions would be taken more seriously. However, in the years since then, more projects that specifically sought to ‘mine’ specific genes without great consideration of context, persisted (Manolio 2010). These programmes are a continuation of substance ontology in medicine, as genes, like germs, are considered to contain unimpeachable behavioural scripts for action, even where context is afforded some influence. The implication of this reductive paradigm is the placement of blame for disease on individuals and their faulty genes and choices, or germs and their inherent villainy, rather than the socio-ecological systems they are formed within (Brown 2007). Senier et al. (2017) note that approaches focussed on creating an inventory of environmental exposures to be mined, like genes in the HGP, obscures many of the most important causal processes of disease, including the manufacture of hazardous substances, and the influence of socio-economic marginalisation on exposure risk. While recognising the challenges associated with measuring exposures without relying on simplified categories, there are ways this information can be contextualised to give a sense of the processes in which they are embedded. Senier et al. (2017) use tobacco smoke as an illustrative example. Under the exposome-as-inventory model, exposure to tobacco may be measured as the number of cigarettes an individual smokes in a week. A socio-exposome approach, on the other hand, would also account for the regulatory and industry aspects of smoking laws and their enforcement, and how trade policies and practices that support tobacco marketing across diverse locales, among other variables. This extension of the exposome concept to encompass the ‘socio-exposome’ can also be seen in other disciplines. For example, in the context of health geography, Prior (2019) proposes that ‘exposomic thinking’ may provide the means of investigating mechanisms for the embodiment of context, including social relations, over

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one’s lifecourse. Similarly, Watson and Cooper (2019) have argued that exposomic thinking may aid in the investigation of the ways flavour preferences are moulded within late industrial food systems. Roberts and Sanz’s (2018) ‘bioethnographic’ method, combining ethnographic and biological data to characterise the transmitted life circumstances that influence inequality and health, has similar ambitions. In advocating for such an approach, it is important to distinguish between methods used to understand process and harm, and methods used to assign accountability and responsibility. A number of researchers (see Nixon 2011; Shapiro et al. 2017; Shadaan and Murphy 2020; Liboiron 2021) make the crucial point that we are beyond the point of needing to establish that post-industrial compounds do harm, as the requirement to continually prove biophysical damage perpetuates a situation in which polluters only have to act when harm is definitively exhibited; pollution is violence regardless of whether or not harm is demonstrated in every body exposed. Exposomic and other biomonitoring practices can inadvertently play into this politics of evidence in which polluters can get away with inaction if test results are ambiguous. While molecular bureaucracies still require that harm is demonstrated definitively in the molecular register, socio-exposomic approaches may help nuance and contextualise the data that eventually enables regulators to hold polluters accountable. If regulatory systems did evolve to improve producer responsibility, research into the socio-exposome may be less necessary as evidence, but remain valuable for understanding biosocial processes and how late industrial bodies may be treated and ‘re-tuned’. In addition to these ways of exploring how humans are situated and shaped by more-than-human environments, new research and ethnographic modes have emerged within anthropology and geography that interrogate nature/culture, human/non-human distinctions. In particular, ‘multispecies ethnography’ and ‘chemo-ethnography’ attend to the emergence of new social realities through dynamic interactions between other life and chemicals, respectively (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Shapiro and Kirksey 2017). Multispecies ethnography is about exploring how the human has been created and transformed by engagement with other species, and more specifically, who benefits from these encounters (Kirksey et al. 2014). Similarly, chemo-ethnography is focussed

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on the ways that modern chemistry is producing new social, political and economic relations that are adversely affecting human health and landscapes, but also creating new possibilities for life (Shapiro and Kirksey 2017). By following compounds, and their reactions, emergence, and decay, anthropologists are finding new ways to understand the role of chemical agents in perpetuating and transforming certain social arrangements (Landecker and Panofsky 2013; Myers 2015; Liboiron 2015). In past research I have combined multispecies and chemoethnography with social practice approaches to investigate the biosocial nature of personal and domestic hygiene practices (Wakefield-Rann et al. 2019). This hybrid approach allows an interrogation of how particular forms of human and non-human agency are influenced by and emerge from practices, and how actions and material processes build indoor environments over time. These approaches may also provide a way of tracing indoor ecologies into the body and bodies into their ecologies across different contexts and scales. By connecting biosocial processes occurring within bodies, indoor enclosures and the external systems with which they are in continuous relation, the risk of setting limited system boundaries for healthy dwelling can potentially be reduced. In addition to these ethnographic approaches, other scholarly responses are emerging that advocate for more relational ways of understanding hazardous chemicals that resist the fetishization of molecules (Liboiron et al. 2018). For example, Nick Shapiro proposes the concept of Persistent Ephemeral Pollutants (PEP) to highlight the ludicrousness of the idea that molecular makeup alone dictates which chemicals pose sustained toxic threats without attending to their broader relations over time and space (Shapiro 2019). In a related vein, Angeliki Balayannis and Emma Garnett (2020) examine what new types of data practices may be able to respond to the growing scholarship that asks how one can inquire into the effects of living with pollution without producing research that reinforces and reproduces the infrastructures that generate environmentally embedded violence (Liboiron et al. 2018; Murphy 2008; Shapiro et al. 2017). Like Senier and colleagues, they critique data practices that

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obscure the social, material and political relations through which pollutants come to cause harm, and suggest that new forms of research may help to foreground these relations and the scale at which they matter. The project examples on which Balayannis and Garnett draw to illustrate the potential of alternative data practices are interesting because they ‘…materialize responsibility and offer new pathways for action that regulatory data in isolation often erase or close down’ (Balayannis and Garnett 2020, 5). The projects—including Air South Asia, The Asthma Files platform and the Mexican Exposures project—exemplify the challenges and potential of combining quantitative exposure data and qualitative data, including storytelling and records of place-based actions. Similarly, research projects such as Citizen Sense in the UK are experimenting with modes of sensing and presenting data to bring new forms of evidence into political and regulatory debates (Gabrys et al. 2016). By re-embedding data in place and relations, these projects begin to highlight where bad relations and irresponsibility are active. As noted above, the relational cosmologies of many Indigenous cultures offer important insights concerning how a reality conceptualised as intertwined processes suggest obligations and responsibilities to the more-than-humans ecologies (Wilson 2008). Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts (2013, 23) explains that: …habitats and ecosystems are better understood as societies from an Indigenous point of view; meaning that they have ethical structures, interspecies treaties and agreements, and further their ability to interpret, understand and implement. Non-human beings are active members of society. Not only are they active, they also directly influence how humans organize themselves into that society.

The Indigenous perspectives expressed by scholars such as Shawn Wilson and Vanessa Watts work against the dominant scientific tendency to dislocate, universalise and obscure responsibility which, as I discussed in Chapter 2, is central to a substance ontology and the modernist project.

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A wider range of perspectives and types of knowledge must participate in characterising the expanded realm of processes and actors considered to be relevant to health and dwelling. For the socio-exposome, bioethnography and other new data practices to reach their potential as approaches capable of transforming dominant understandings of pathogen ecologies, more transdisciplinary, collaborative, participatory and inclusive research will be necessary. This shift would necessarily involve a greater engagement with diverse peoples and representatives of non-humans, currently excluded from the majority of decision making that shapes what materials can flow where and when. The greater inclusion of diverse epistemologies and people is not only a matter of justice—particularly in settler colonial societies—but of activating the conceptual wealth many cultures can offer to enable broad transformative change. In my interrogation of the indoors, I have joined the many voices now proclaiming that there is no outside. Prior attempts to create an external environment partitioned away using height, distance, glass, insulation, antimicrobials, and other tools that allow us to fabricate personalised bubbles of immunity are being spectacularly undermined. In addition to the developments I have traced in microbial ecology and toxicology, new conceptual models and practices within epigenetics and Earth system sciences are also highlighting the porosity and permeability of bodily and ecological systems (Meloni et al. 2021). While many have theorised about this paradigmatic shift into the Anthropocene as an epoch characterised by global permeability and collapse, it is unhelpful to consider these concepts only in general terms. There is now a wealth of research addressing the unevenness of responsibility and of exposure to late industrial pathogen ecologies that often follow traditional lines of colonial violence (See Liboiron et al. 2018; Shadaan and Murphy 2020; Pratt 2010). Specificity is important. This book has endeavoured to show how to process philosophy may offer more apt and encompassing abstractions for investigating dwelling, immunity and the dynamics of bodies in specific environments over time. I began this book by characterising the menagerie of strange creatures that have been unfamiliar to us for the duration of history yet are now our closest bedfellows. The pure containers that many of us

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had bound ourselves within—bodies, species, homes—and in opposition to—germs, toxicants—are losing their structural integrity as our understanding of the ways that our new companions are participating in and shaping our bodies increases. The dynamic processes that produce late modern pathogen ecologies have been made imperceptible by a regime of substance-based abstractions that cannot account for this dynamism. If we follow these processes, and see indoor spaces as situated spatiotemporal events made of specific relationships, the myth of enclosure becomes untenable. The question then becomes: how can more relational and reflexive ways of defining and practising dwelling, health and immunity be created at scale that will allow better futures to flourish?

Notes 1. A limitation of ‘scorecard’ systems is that they have been tied to the specific spatio-temporal configuration of the building at the moment the assessments take place. As a result, buildings can tick a box that is meant to be indicative of a more sustainable practice, that is not supported by the broader ecology it is situated within or does not achieve better outcomes for occupant health or environmental impact overall. For example, it has been pointed out that many LEED buildings have received credit for installing bike racks, but the building is surrounded by busy roads without bike lanes, so occupants do not ride. It is also common for designers make material decision of the basis of LEED points, rather than site or climate-appropriate variables. Similarly, many LEED certified buildings are located outside of cities with inadequate public transport access, forcing occupants to drive. Many of these issues have been well noted and attempts to account for building operations and transport connections have been made. 2. I have thus far managed to avoid delving into any of Whitehead’s notoriously esoteric terminology, but I feel this one requires some explanation. Based on Whitehead’s metaphysics, ‘experiences’ do not only happen to conscious beings. Rather he uses the term to refer to all experience, by which he means everything real that is happening as

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such. Similarly, the ‘subject’ is conceptualised as an emergent product of a unification of processes. In other words, all of the processes that are happening and intersecting in the world at a given moment (experience) produce and constitute the things we would call subjects. In this way, a rock is an event at a particular moment in time, in that it is the culmination of multiple processes at various spatio-temporal scales that have come together. This is a useful way to think because it allows us to consider that the rock will be different in the next moment in time, even if it appears the same on the temporal scale of human perception. 3. There is a live debate among practice theory scholars over whether it is only humans that can carry practices. Given the central thesis of this book, I maintain that it is also useful to think about more-thanhuman and other than human practices.

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Index

A

Air 3, 7, 33, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58, 66, 90, 91, 93–95, 98, 101, 102, 109, 130, 138, 147, 149, 170, 172–176, 179, 183, 184, 191, 194, 201 Airconditioning 12, 16, 69, 90, 92–94, 95–101, 110. See also Climate control Allergies 4, 6, 21, 80–85, 148, 149, 151, 152, 192, 194 Anthropocene 6, 202 Antibacterial 176, 181, 192 Antimicrobial 4, 5, 22, 24, 53, 59, 79, 124–126, 138–140, 144–153, 155–157, 161, 162, 169, 176, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185, 191, 195, 196, 202 products 150, 191, 195

resistance 7, 125, 140, 145, 152, 154, 155, 158, 159, 162, 170, 179, 195. See also Antibacterial Aristotle 23–25, 133 Atopic disease 7, 80, 148, 158, 161

B

Biodiversity hypothesis 82–84, 101, 151 Biosocial 66, 96, 162, 189, 193, 195, 196, 199, 200 practices 189, 195, 196 Bowker, Goffrey 128, 129, 137, 185

C

Categorisation. 8, 35, 102, 137, 160, 169, 171, 185–188, 190, 196. See also Classification

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Wakefield-Rann, Life Indoors, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5176-2

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Index

Chemo-ethnography 199, 200 Circular economy 177, 178 Classification 13, 18, 125, 137, 138, 140, 170, 171, 174, 175, 178, 185–188 Climate control 17, 22, 79, 90, 91, 93, 96, 138, 170 Comfort 2, 15, 69, 77, 92–96, 99, 140, 143, 144, 161, 184, 192 science of 92, 93, 96, 98, 99 thermal comfort 92, 93, 95, 173, 174, 191, 194 Contagionism 49 Corbusier, Le 15, 62, 66, 67, 93

D

Design domestic 60, 63, 143, 177 modernist 47, 60, 62, 65, 170 postmodern 69 urban 12 water systems 87 Domestic practices 180, 195 Dupré, John 26–31, 33, 38, 47, 86, 159, 160, 186–188

E

Enclosure 10, 63, 89, 144, 161, 170, 200, 203 Endocrine disrupting compounds 152 Epidemics 19, 48, 49, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 80, 81, 101, 108, 149, 154, 175 Exposome 145, 149, 197, 198

G

Germ theory 21, 45, 47, 50–54, 57–61, 70, 71, 94, 111, 130, 133, 138, 141, 170, 182 Green building 172, 173

H

Hepler-Smith, Evan 127–129, 131, 132, 134, 158, 179 Heraclitus 27 Hippocratic-Galenic medicine 48, 49 Horizontal gene transfer 155, 158, 159 Hygiene 5, 18, 46, 53, 54, 57, 58, 61–65, 69, 77, 132, 140–142, 149, 173, 177, 192, 195 hygiene hypothesis 81–83 practices 53, 56–58, 61, 70, 140, 181, 191, 200

I

Immunity 7, 8, 10, 16, 19–23, 28, 46, 47, 52, 53, 56, 58, 69, 70, 78, 79, 83, 126, 159, 169, 177, 186, 192, 202, 203 Indoor Environmental Quality 173, 174

L

Landecker, Hannah 31, 32, 37, 106, 152–158, 161, 162, 200 LEED building certification 173–175, 178

Index

M

Mechanism 16, 19, 20, 25–27, 29, 37, 49, 51, 54, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 81, 82, 93, 110, 124, 131, 136, 137, 146, 147, 155, 198 biology 26, 29, 93 cartesian 27 physics 26, 27, 38 Miasma 19, 48, 49, 54, 57, 59, 94 Microbiome 13, 33, 101, 147, 149, 151, 182, 184 human 82–85, 181, 187 indoor 13, 85, 101, 104, 138, 147, 149, 151 showerhead 104, 106, 151, 187 Modernism 61, 62, 69 design and architecture 61, 68 international style 67, 68 Molecular bureaucracy 134, 179, 180 Multispecies ethnography 199 Murphy, Michelle 18, 37, 93–95, 126, 133, 134, 138, 197, 199, 200, 202 N

Nash, Linda 7, 8, 37, 59, 60, 67, 71, 126, 130, 133, 139, 170 Nicholson, Daniel J. 23, 26–31, 38, 47, 186–188 O

‘Old friends hypothesis’ 82, 83 Ontological theory of disease 54 P

Pasteur, Louis 50, 51

215

Pathogen ecology 5–8, 10, 14, 46, 78, 103, 105, 110, 124, 170, 176, 191, 195, 196, 202, 203 Paxson, Heather 106, 183 Physiological theory of disease 46–48 Probiotic practices 181–183, 185, 195 Process philosophy 38, 185, 186, 202 Purity 47, 52, 54, 55, 59, 62, 65, 71, 88, 102, 127, 130, 139, 141, 154, 158, 169 Biss, Eula 170 Shotwell, Alexis 71, 130, 169

S

Sanitation 54, 58, 60, 124, 187 movement 63, 94, 141 practices 139 systems 46, 58, 78, 80, 154 Senses 8, 21, 27, 29, 32–34, 46, 55, 58, 60, 64–66, 82, 98, 99, 128, 132, 137, 139, 155, 181, 187, 190, 191, 193–196, 198, 201 Shove, Elizabeth 95–97, 189–191 Sick Building Syndrome 138, 144, 174 Skin 14, 54–56, 83, 93, 101, 104, 106, 143, 146, 149–151, 177, 184, 194 cultural significance 151 microbiome 54, 84, 150 Social practice theory 171, 200 Socio-exposome 198, 199, 202 Species 3–5, 17, 21, 27, 31, 32, 34, 35, 45, 46, 51, 52, 79, 83, 86–89, 99–101, 103–107,

216

Index

109, 111, 126, 150, 155, 158, 159, 199, 201, 203 Starr, Susan Leigh 128, 129, 137, 185 Substance ontology 24, 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, 47, 53, 62, 111, 125, 133, 159, 161, 169, 186, 198, 201

W

WELL building certification 174, 175 Whitehead, Alfred North 28, 29, 187, 203 Wilson, Shawn 9, 188, 201

Z

Zymotic theory of disease 50, 54