Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, founders of ecoLogicStudio and their research partners: the Urban Morphogenesis Lab at The Bartlett UCL, the Synthetic Landscape Lab at the University of Innsbruck, and the CREATE Group / WASP Hub Denmark at the University of Southern Denmark participates in the exhibition “La Fabrique du vivant ”[The fabric of life] at the Center Pompidou in Paris (20 February - 15 April 2019).
The show, part of the Mutations-Créations series and curated by Marie-Ange Brayer with Olivier Zeitoun, traces the archeology of living and artificial life.
As the curators state, in the digital age a new interaction is emerging between creation and the fields of life sciences, neuroscience and synthetic biology. The notion of "living" takes on a new form of artificiality, which permeates the entire Urbansphere - the global apparatus of contemporary urbanity. Here, the miniaturization, distribution and intelligence of man-made urban networks have reached human complexity, generating evolutionary processes of synthetic life on Earth.
In this context, a multidisciplinary team led by architects Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, created “in-human gardens”, two living 3D printed sculptures receptive to human and non-human life. These pieces address the dictates of human rationality with the effects of proximity to artificial intelligence. Both sculptures were developed in “collaboration” with living organisms, in particular colonies of photosynthetic cyanobacteria, HORTUS XL Astaxanthin.g, and the Asian Fawn Tarantulas collective, XenoDerma. Their non-human work is mediated by spatial substructures developed by the artists during the study of biological models of endosymbiosis. These structures are algorithmically designed and manufactured using large-scale, high-resolution 3D printing technology.
Both sculptural pieces are destined to be speculative prototypes in 1 scale: 1 of living architectures, a new generation of rich biophile architectural skins and receptive to urban life.
HORTUS XL Astaxanthin.g
(ecoLogicStudio in collaboration with Innsbruck University - Synthetic Landscape Lab, CREATE Group / WASP Hub Denmark - University of Southern Denmark)
In HORTUS XL Astaxanthin.g, a digital algorithm simulates the growth of a substrate inspired by coral morphology. This is physically deposited by 3D printing machines in layers of 400 microns, supported by triangular units of 46 mm and divided into hexagonal blocks of 18,5 cm. Photosynthetic cyanobacteria are inoculated through biogels into individual triangular cells, or bio-pixels, forming the biological intelligence units of the system. Their metabolisms, fueled by photosynthesis, convert radiation into oxygen and biomass. The density value of each bio-pixel is digitally calculated in order to optimally arrange the photosynthetic organisms along the iso-surfaces of a greater incoming radiation. Among the oldest organisms on Earth, the unique biological intelligence of cyanobacteria is gathered as part of a new form of bio-digital architecture.
In the spring of 2019, HORTUS XL Astaxanthin.g will be exhibited at the MAK - Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.
XenoDerma
(Urban Morphogenesis Lab directed by Claudia Pasquero at The Bartlett UCL)
In XenoDerma, the morphogenesis of the spider web is intercepted with an artificial spatial armor, algorithmically designed and 3D printed. The minds of spiders, in this case the Fawn Tarantulas of Asia, do not reside entirely within their bodies, as their webs constitute a form of spatial thinking. Information from their networks becomes an integral part of their cognitive systems. Spider behavior and silk production are reprogrammed in XenoDerma through the design of the 3D printed substructure and its geometric features. The result consciously searches for productive ambiguities, revealing the alien beauty of its silky morphologies, an intelligence that resides somewhere in the intersection of the biological, technological and digital realms.
La Fabrique du Vivant, XenoDerma
CREDITS
HORTUS XL Astaxanthin.g, 2019, 3d printed substratum, micro-algae in biogel medium, 320 x 272 x 114 cm
Design: ecoLogicStudio (Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto, Konstantinos Alexopoulos, Matteo Baldissarra, Michael Brewster)
Research partner for 3D biological and printing systems and production development: Synthetic Landscape Lab, IOUD, Innsbruck University (Prof. Claudia Pasquero, Maria Kuptsova, Terezia Greskova, Emiliano Rando, Jens Burkart, Niko Jabadari, Simon Posch); Photosynthetica consortium (www.photosynthetica.co.uk)
Research partner for 3d printed systems and production development: CREATE Group / WASP Hub Denmark - University of Southern Denmark (SDU) (Prof. Roberto Naboni, Furio Magaraggia)
Engineering: YIP structural engineering, Manja Van De Worp
Microalgal Medium Material Support: Ecoduna AG
3D printing Material Support: Extrudr
XenoDerma, 2018, spider silk morphologies (Asian Fawn Tarantulas) informed by 3D printed substratum, 118 x 34 x 93 cm
Design, Production and Research: Urban Morphogenesis Lab (Lab Director: Claudia Pasquero Cluster Researchers: Filippo Nassetti, Emmanouil Zaroukas Design Team: Mengxuan Lii, Xiao Liang) B-Pro, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
www.urbanmorphogenesislab.com
In-human Gardens Video, 2019 by ecoLogicStudio
concept: Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto
Production and editing: Konstantinos Alexopoulos, Michael Brewster
La Fabrique du Vivant [The Fabric of the Living] 20 February - 15 April 2019 Gallery 4 - Center Pompidou, Paris
www.centrepompidou.fr
