Piece Title: SUBCULTURE: Microbial Metrics and the Multispecies City
Date: September 19th, 2018 – February 16th, 2019
Venue: Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, NY
Curator: Eva Franch i Gilabert (currently Princeton University School of Architecture)
Team: Kevin Slavin (MIT Media Lab), Elizabeth Henaff, The Living (David Benjamin, John Locke, Danil Nagy, Damon Lau, Dale Zhao, Ray Wang, Jim Stoddart, Lorenzo Villaggi)
Collaborators: Evan Eisman Company (sandblasting)
Press:
Awards:
American Institute of Architects NY Chapter, 2018 Design Awards, Merit
Summary: Cities are built for humans, but humans need symbiotic relationships with microbes for their health and well-being. What would a building look like if it were designed for micro-organisms? The goal of this exhibit is an experiment in designing a bio-receptive building façade for a building in downtown Manhattan.
Description: Subculture utilizes the technological innovations of small-scale genetic sequencing devices to transform Storefront’s gallery space into an active “urban metagenomic sensor.” As a living environment and analytic laboratory, it collects, extracts, sequences, and analyzes the microbial life of its immediate environment.
As a sensing device, the façade of Storefront’s gallery space is supplemented by a simple bio-receptive material: wood. Previously a living host for species such as beetles, worms, fungi, and bacteria, wood—even in its inert state as a building material—is a well-suited home for microbial life due to its molecular composition and its micro and macro shapes.
During the course of the exhibition, accreted genetic material will be extracted from bio-receptive wooden tiles installed on Storefront’s façade and in particular sites across New York City.
The materials, exposed directly to their environments, will undergo an extraction and analysis process designed to indicate the metabolic functions of their geographically-specific microbiome. The microscopic interactions with the built environment may reveal information about the origins, actions, and destinations of the humans and animals in the neighborhood, the pollutants present in the air, and potentially entirely new frameworks yet to be understood.
All of the material choices selected for a given microbiome (and the characteristics of common materials that affect microorganisms, such as texture and pH) are not readily visible to humans. A seemingly flat surface might be riddled with microscopic mountains and valleys. A texture rough to our touch may not present relief when observed at the micro scale. How do we design materials that aim to host these microorganisms, taking into account the sensibilities and needs of multiple species?
Subculture provides insight into these challenges. The gallery space is divided into three zones:
MODELS: an introductory area that frames the ideas and issues of microbial scale and species in our cities
METRICS: a working laboratory that features the equipment and processes used in metagenomics experiments
MAPS: a space of real-time analysis and visualization of the data gathered in the exhibition, revealing specific species and functions
On the facade, wood tiles cut from standard lumber are deliberately eroded through sandblasting at various depths. Unlike milling or cutting, sandblasting enhances the variation in wood by eroding soft areas and leaving behind hard areas, revealing the unique characteristics of each piece of wood.
The tiles are assembled on the panels of Storefront’s facade, forming a pattern of diverse microclimates. Each microclimate has distinct grains and knots that form different pockets of shade and moisture, collecting and hosting microbes throughout the duration of the exhibition. These microbes are present in the micro texture on the surface of the wood, through deep channels in the wood grain, and through twisting fins that serve as a filter for air passing between the exterior and interior of the gallery.
Eschewing our common modes of cleanliness and sterility, the façade installation provokes us to think of buildings as complex and living. How do we transform that which is inert, flat, and uniform into something alive and textured? As our methods, tools, and mindsets for design shift, we move toward the imagination of a new and living forms of architecture.
Subculture projects a bioreceptive consciousness of cities and spaces, exposing the public to an invisible layer of analysis that is rewriting our understanding of the health, ecology, and identity of our buildings and spaces.
Materials: Sandblasted wood tiles, mylar sheets, pen plotter, laboratory equipment: centrifuge, pipettes, Nanopore DNA sequencer, Qiagen DNA extraction kit
Installation View
Detail View
