Postmortem Architect

This article assesses the role of the female cadaver in the design of 16 Great Windmill Street in London, the house/museum/anatomy theater complex built in 1767 by Robert Mylne, student of Piranesi, and William Hunter, man-midwife, physician to the queen of England, and first professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy. The focus on the female cadaver exposes the rigid gendering of emergent spaces of modern Western science. More important, this investigation suggests that the subaltern subject of a building might act less as a passive object and more as an active agent in the generation of the building’s program. Considering the cadaver as a participant in the planning of structures that exhibited her might prompt a broader, more critical consideration of the design role of animate objects in other building types, including abattoirs and prisons, and of the societies that produce them.