Let us accept the following: no convincing argument has been made for the idea that pig farms must be laid out horizontally, and even less if the site is in an area of steppe lands with a fragile ecosystem in need of preservation. This was the argument made by Vartan Oskanyan, a young, self-taught Armenian farmer, who after traveling around Europe and Central America returned to his native land and built an 8-story building for nearly 900 head of porcine livestock. An actual building, as commonly understood: floors on top of one another, windows, a reception area, emergency ladder, elevator for people, elevator for freight, et cetera. The pigs live on the first 4 floors, in conventionally compartmentalized spaces, and may range around—all part of Vartan’s quest to humanize their existence. On the 4 upper floors live the people: 20 families hailing from refugee camps or victims of the ongoing, successive wars that have taken place in the Middle East since halfway through the twentieth century. They themselves built the complex using materials provided by the Armenian state—though the authorities do not know about the continued presence of the refugees: officially the building is only for pigs. The sows go on the 4th floor with the piglets. As the animals grow, they are moved successively down until they reach the ground floor, where they will be kept for just 2 or 3 days before going to the slaughterhouse. The reasoning is purely pragmatic: the region can be intensely cold, and the best way to create a comfortable dwelling without any electricity is by using the heat generated by the animals, which rises and is collected by panels in the upper floors. Aside from that, the problem of the smell can be solved by efficient insulation. The flammable gases produced by the pigs on the lower floors are used to heat water and generate light. The 20 families enjoy these living standards—comfortable, decent—in exchange for looking after Vartan Oskanyan’s livestock. And with what they make from the sales of the animals, they want for nothing, even going on excursions in the region from time to time. The top floor Vartan has kept for himself. On quiet nights, when everyone else is asleep, his shining attic is the only light to be seen on the plain, taking on the appearance of a lighthouse, pulsing brighter and dimmer with the brief outages in the rudimentary but secure electrical system, and he puts on a Chet Baker record he bought in Saint-Germain during his time as a waiter in Paris, and over the trumpet the attenuated grunts of the pigs below are heard as they stump across the floor tiles or slip down ramps or gnaw the remaining wood finish on the handrails, through to the iron inside. The light in the attic goes off at around 1:30 a.m., leaving only the light in the upper attic, which is little more than a hut containing the hides of over 3,000 blond pigs, perfectly cured and hanging vertically from the snouts. Arranging them according to size and color, he numbers and observes them, and in one corner, on a drafting table complete with compasses, set squares, mechanical pencils, and a protractor, he sits overlaying them with various maps of the region he sketched out himself. No one else in the building knows about the skins.