Architecture, the Metropolis, and Marine Life: Notes on a Collaborative Imbroglio

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between architecture, science, and metropolitan life through the lens of Anton Dohrn’s zoological station in Naples. Founded in 1872, the station emerged not in isolation, but amid the complexities of a densely populated metropolitan environment, challenging traditional notions of biological field stations. Drawing on a wide array of literary, visual, and archival sources, the paper demonstrates that unlike the many other marine stations which were sited chiefly for their surrounding zoological wealth, Dohrn’s station was positioned at the Bay of Naples principally due to, if not entirely dictated by, its proximity to a bustling former capital city of half a million, by far Italy’s most populous. Which is to say that the metropolitan center, while typically eschewed by field biologists of the time who sought to break with the silent confines of the cabinet, became at Naples marine research’s bedrock.

The study examines how the collaborative dynamics of human and non-human actors shaped the architecture and functionality of Dohrn’s institute, transforming the original architectural idea of a humble cabin into a monumental palace housing one of the most prestigious biological research centers in Europe. While the initial intent was merely to accommodate his seaside water tanks at the Strait of Messina, the relocation to Naples brought about a whole set of entirely alien attributes including the public aquarium program, the spectacularization of living animals, and the monumentality of the architecture. They transformed what was intended as an oceanfront cottage into a veritable urban artifact. All of these non-scientific attributes were adventitious, in the sense that they were both incidental and foreign to the motivation of field research, as much as the zoological station itself was a foreigner’s serendipitous expansion to the human engineering of the Neapolitan coastline. Yet it was precisely these secondary factors that proved essential in enabling research in the first place. In short, Dohrn begot his station at the expense of venturing into a paradoxical situation: to study nature within a whirlpool of artifacts, among which was the station itself.