Page 56 - JCAU-6-2

Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism Storytelling in regenerative architecture

constant vigilance. The entrances and exits of the burrow to environmental changes, and resource management
evoke perpetual anxiety, with fake entrances considered depicts the burrow as a living system in a constant state of
as decoys to mislead predators. The burrow ingeniously regeneration and adaptation to new conditions.
incorporates elements from other creatures, such as forest
voles. It is described as an engineering marvel featuring
intricate tunnels, chambers, defenses, and a central citadel
— a grotesque abattoir or proto-shopping mall:
“When I’m standing in the citadel, surrounded by
my towering stocks of meat, facing the ten exits that
radiate from there, each one fulfilling its role in the
overall plan, going up or down, straight or curved,
widening or narrowing, and all equally silent and
empty and ready, each one after its fashion all set,
to lead me on to the numerous plazas, and these
too all of them empty and silent — then I have little
thought of security, then I know exactly that this is Figure 3. Burrow. Source: Original work by the author
my castle, which I carved out of the recalcitrant earth Kafka’s fiction burrows through language,
by scratching and biting, stamping and butting, my constructing and collapsing its own narratives,
castle that can never belong to another in any way, gnawing at its own epistemological craft and
that is so much mine that in the end I can take the structures. To read The Burrow instrumentally, merely
mortal wound from my foe quite calmly, because as a straightforward allegory for the challenges and
my blood will drain away into my soil, and will not opportunities of regenerative architecture, would
go to waste.” - Kafka, 2017, p. 217-8 overlook the story’s intricate craftsmanship, which
For this creature, ventilation and silence are sources of robustly resists interpretative closure.
satisfaction. While aware that ventures outside the burrow My intention here, therefore, is to explore a line of
increase vulnerability, such excursions are necessary for reading that might yield insights for our present purposes.
hunting and replenishing food supplies. Despite the careful Such a reading serves as a reminder that sustainable design
design aimed at protecting and sustaining the creature’s goes beyond sketching physical structures; it involves
life, the burrow fails to eliminate anxiety and fear. The
creature remains acutely conscious of the possibility of creating living systems that adapt and regenerate over time.
intrusion over its borders and tirelessly works to maintain It prompts us to consider how our buildings and structures
defenses against collapse or potential threats. The obsessive impact the environment, urging us to work towards a more
building and maintenance work accumulate into a form of harmonious and sustainable future—one in which humans
imprisonment for the creature, which yearns for an ally and the natural world can coexist in balance, avoiding the
but concedes that trusting another creature is impossible, trap in which the solitary creature in Kafka’s story has been
given that the burrow was created for its builder alone. ensnared.
In The Burrow, the creature’s fixation on security and Temporal logics of progress, causality, and decline —
control serves as a reminder that an exclusive focus on or the notions of fall and redemption — are not in play
creating secure environments risks losing sight of the larger here. Instead, the story’s abrupt ending (“—but everything
systems and processes that sustain life. It underscores the went on unchanged”) locates the story, as so often in
intricate relationships between buildings and structures Kafka, in the infinite uncertainty of ritual. Whether this
and their impact on the environment and, reciprocally, applies to our current trajectory of ecological collapse
how the environment impacts us. The creature’s perpetual remains a question contingent on one’s relationship to
awareness of the need for burrow maintenance, adaptation optimism.

Volume 6 Issue 2 (2024) 9 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.1335