ecoLogicStudio

The renowned Centre Pompidou in Paris is to open its doors to two living sculptures, embodying the future forms of spatial intelligence. The exhibition, titled “La Fabrique du vivant” [The Fabric of the Living], will feature “H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g” by ecoLogicStudio in collaboration with Innsbruck University - Synthetic Landscape Lab, CREATE Group / WASP Hub Denmark - University of Southern Denmark, and "XenoDerma" by Urban Morphogenesis Lab directed by Claudia Pasquero at The Bartlett UCL.

Running from February 20th to April 15th, the exhibition will examine the notion of “living” in a digital era, where new interactions are emerging between the fields of life science, neuroscience, and synthetic biology. Permeating the entire urbanscape, this global, digital apparatus “encompasses miniaturization, distribution, and intelligence of manmade urban networks of in-human complexity, engendering evolving processes of synthetic life on Earth.”

For the exhibition, ecoLogicStudio founders Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto have created “in-human gardens”, two 3D printed living sculptures receptive to human and non-human life. With a design incorporating living organisms, both structures contain colonies of photosynthetic cyanobacteria. The structures themselves have been algorithmically designed and produced using large-scale, high-resolution 3D printing technology.

The H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g was designed by ecoLogicStudio in collaboration with Innsbruck University - Synthetic Landscape Lab, CREATE Group / WASP Hub Denmark - University of Southern Denmark. In the installation, a digital algorithm simulates the growth of substratum inspired by coral morphology, which is digitally deposited by 3D printing machines. The photosynthetic bacteria is inoculated on a bio gel medium in triangular units (or “bio-pixels”), arranged to form hexagonal blocks of 18.5cm.

The metabolisms hosted by the structure are powered by photosynthesis, converting radiation to oxygen and biomass. The density of bacteria on each bio-pixel has been digitally computed to ensure the organisms are positioned in areas of increasing incoming radiation. According to the team, “cyanobacteria's unique biological intelligence is gathered as part of a new form of bio-digital architecture.” Along with its exhibition in the Pompidou, the structure will be exhibited at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna in Spring 2019.

In the Anthropocene age, a non-anthropocentric mode of reasoning, and deploying cutting-edge technologies based on digital and biological intelligence, could be at the core of urban design and stimulate our collective sensibility to recognise patterns of reasoning across disciplines, materialities and technological regimes. As if in some way Bruno Latour’s Parliament of Things finally developed an operational commission on built environment cooperation, this is the statement animating the Photo.Synth.Etica project. 

EcoLogicStudio has designed a modular system filtering CO2 and polluants by installing algae culture on building facades.

Photo.Synth.Etica, conceived by London-based architectural and urban design firm ecoLogicStudio in a partnered consortium with Urban Morphogenesis Lab – UCL and Synthetic Landscapes Lab – University of Innsbruck, has been presented in Dublin during the week of Climate Innovation Summit 2018. An “urban curtain”, it captures CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in real-time: approximately one kilo of CO2 per day, equivalent to that of 20 large trees.

Designed to be integrated into both existing and new buildings, it is composed of 16,2 x 7 metre modules, each one functioning as a photobioreactor — a digitally designed and custom made bioplastic container — using daylight to feed the living micro-algal cultures and releasing luminescent shades at night.

Unfiltered urban air is introduced at the bottom of the façade and air bubbles naturally rise through the watery medium within the bioplastic photobioreactors. CO2 molecules and air pollutants are captured and stored by the algae, and grow into reusable biomass. photosynthesized oxygen is then released from the top of each module.

Their serpentine design optimizes the carbon sequestration process, and contributes to ecoLogicStudio aim to symbolically embody a parallelism between the monetary carbon trading market and the transactions carried out by the molecules, as ecoLogicStudio’s founders say: “The message is one of spatial convergence and connectivity between the financial marketplace of cyberspace and the relative organic molecular transactions in the biosphere”.

Project: Photo.Synth.Etica 

Architects: ecoLogicStudio (Claudia Pasquero eMarco Poletto) 

Design team: 

Konstantinos Alexopoulos, Nico Aulitzky, Shlok Soni, Robert Staples, Chrysi Vrantsi, Chia Wei Yang; Structural Engineering: Manja van de Worp (Nous Engineering, USA); Bioplastic Supply and Manufacturing Support: James Woollard (Polythene, UK); Microalgae Cultures Supply: Dr. Fiona Moejes (Bantry Marine Research Station, Ireland)