Bio-digital aesthetics as value system of post-Anthropocene architecture

Dark ecology

The current rush of many cities to develop blue–green plans dealing with future threats of climate change is a testament to the obsession of searching for ‘true’ answers within a problem-solving framework. ^3,4 The experience, in practice, illustrated in this article highlights the urgent need for a new design method capable of engaging the systemic nature of urban landscapes and their architecture. This could be termed as an aesthetic approach to socio-ecological issues and it is perhaps best exemplified by the authors’ current collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, described in details in the second part of this article.

Aesthetics is often absent from urban planning discussions. However, architects and planners often rely on a ‘sanitised’ and therefore highly aestheticised vision of the world’s ecosystems exemplified by the very notion of blue–green planning and its focus on re-greening cities. This notion may be one of the most enduring aspects we have inherited from modernity (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

ecoLogicStudio, Tallinn Wet City. 2018 Morphological studies and proposal for new blue–green infrastructure for Tallinn connecting the existing wastewater system with a new urban terrain for rainwater capturing, wastewater processing and protection from Baltic sea surges and contamination. Bird’s-eye view of the main urban structures.

And if bacteriological control was at the origin of its sanitation efforts, modern architecture and urban design turned it into a style; in other words, modernity did embed sanitation into an aesthetic value system. The contemporary paradigms of green cities and smart cities are the direct consequence of the evolution of that value system.

But urban systems today are non-linear and composed of billions of interlocking feedback loops. Waste, decay, digestion and dissolution are some of their most intense processes and a critical part of their circularity; these processes often constitute the dark side of urban ecology, a side confined to restricted zones, exported to poorer regions of the world and erased from the consciousness of most developed urban dwellers.

It has, therefore, become apparent to the authors in their ongoing practice how critical it is to address the necessary drive to a sustainable urban future by challenging its underpinning aesthetic value system.

Non-human architecture

Reassessing the dark side of urban ecology means opening up to a new aesthetic of nature and, as a consequence, of architecture. This new aesthetic of nature projects the architectural discourse into the realm of microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, creatures endowed with exceptional properties that make them capable of turning waste and pollution into nutrients and raw material. These scalar and material domains unveil the missing links to redefine the contemporary urban metabolism.

From this perspective, ecoLogicStudio’s bio-digital architectures promote a new urban aesthetic centred on a novel appreciation for the microscale of bacteria as well as other forms of non-human intelligence. Within ecoLogicStudio’s body of work, the cultivation of these organisms becomes an act of ‘culturalisation’, ⁵ thus entering the realm of architecture.

A notable example is ecoLogicStudio’s ‘H.O.R.T.U.S.’ series, begun in 2012 and currently ongoing. H.O.R.T.U.S., the Latin term for garden, here works as an acronym for Hydro Organisms Responsive to Urban Stimuli. It refers to a series of photosynthetic sculptures and urban structures that create artificial habitats for cyanobacteria integrated in the built environment. Within H.O.R.T.U.S., cyanobacteria are deployed not only as photosynthetic machines but also to absorb emissions from building systems. They constitute a new active layer part of both urban and natural metabolic cycles, thus reconnecting the so-called green and dark sides of ecology.

The latest incarnation of the concept is a bio-digital piece named ‘H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g’ and first presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2019 as part of the seminal exhibition titled ‘La fabrique du vivant’ (Figure 4). The project is inspired by studies conducted by the authors on the collective behaviour of coral colonies and their morphogenesis. Individual coral polyps host microalgae called zooxanthellae within their tissues. ⁶ As the algae photosynthesise, they provide a metabolic flow of energy to the polyps, which in turn, use it to build their exoskeleton of calcium carbonate. More exposure to sunlight results in more rapid growth. This positive feedback loop enables the characteristic convoluted morphology of many known coral species to emerge.

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Figure 4.

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2019. ©NAARO. Front of view of the installation and cyber-gardeners. A digital algorithm simulates the growth of a substratum inspired by coral morphology, which is digitally deposited by 3D-printing machines. The photosynthetic bacteria are inoculated on a bio-gel medium in triangular units (or ‘bio-pixels’), arranged to form hexagonal blocks of 18.5 cm (7.28″).

In this research project, a digital algorithm is deployed to simulate the growth of a 3D substratum inspired by coral morphogenesis. The resulting set of digital meshes is then analysed and two of them are selected as the inner and outer layers of the 3D-printed substratum of the sculpture. In the meshes, each vertex represents a virtual version of coral polyps.

The substratum is then further developed to become a 3D-printable structure. The structure, as in the case of corals, is developed to support the proliferation of colonies of cyanobacteria that will inhabit its individual cells (bio-pixels). Each cell is therefore occupying the interstitial space between the inner and outer layer. These two layers are then translated into a porous field of contour lines indexical of incoming solar radiation. These curvilinear profiles provide partial enclosure to the cells while enabling light penetration and oxygen/CO₂ exchange.

The final digital model of the substratum for the living sculpture is then prepared for 3D printing in PETG on a Wasp machine and processed with the Cura software. The layering process is algorithmically controlled to match the curvilineal profiles of the outer layers with the actual tool paths of the 3D-printing nozzle. In this way, the digital description is perfectly translated into the lines of deposited material.

Each layer is 400 microns thick with triangular infill units of 46 mm. It is printed in 105 hexagonal blocks of 18.5 cm each side producing an overall substratum that is tall enough to enclose an adult human and that reaches 317 cm in its tallest point.

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria cultures are then inoculated, on a bio-gel medium, into the individual triangular cells, or bio-pixels, forming the units of biological intelligence of the system. Their metabolisms, powered by photosynthesis, convert radiation into actual oxygen and biomass. The density value of each bio-pixel is digitally computed to optimally arrange the photosynthetic organisms along isosurfaces of progressively higher incoming radiation. Among the oldest organisms on Earth, cyanobacteria’s unique biological intelligence is now gathered and organised by means of the latest innovation in 3D printing.

The scales of the architectural detailing and the urban microbiome become compatible for the first time in history, conjuring a new form of bio-digital architecture. Noticeably, this enables multiple interactions in buildings that can now be activated by the intelligence of microalgae colonies. The microorganisms grow faster in the bio-digital environments that the authors have designed than in the wild because in these artificial habitats they are very closely connected with human life. Man-made emissions, such as heat and carbon dioxide for instance, stimulate biomass growth. The biomass in turn can be used as source of energy or food. It is a new kind of architectural symbiosis.

The PhotoSynthetica venture

This architectural dimension has been recently explored in a new incarnation of the project unveiled in Tokyo in November 2019 at the Mori Art Museum (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019. Photo: Kioko Keizo. Detail of the sculpture with the view of Tokyo by night. The picture has been taken within the special exhibition room that host the H.O.R.T.U.S. XL living sculpture at the 54th floor of the Mori Tower in Tokyo.

Suspended at the 53rd floor of the Mori Tower and with the backdrop of Tokyo’s urban sprawl, the sculpture materialises its urban dimension as a new prototype of living architecture, the PhotoSynthetica Tower. Explored through a series of associated speculative images, the projects unfold the architectural implications of H.O.R.T.U.S. as the embodiment of Tokyo’s evolution into a future powerhouse of bio-digital culture and technology.

At the city scale, it appears as a complex synthetic organism in which bacteria, autonomous farming machines and other forms of animal intelligence become, alongside humans, bio-citizens thus contributing to the formation and transformation of Tokyo’s own synthetic urban landscape.

The convoluted morphology of PhotoSynthetica Tower and its sheer scale promote a significant microclimatic effect on the prevailing winds, generating enough draught and turbulence to force both natural seeds and air polluting particles through it porous skin. Each module of this skin is then activated to evolve a unique function (Figure 6).

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Figure 6.

ecoLogicStudio, PhotoSynthetica Tower, 2019. Image Vyonyx. Close-up of the photosynthetic cladding.

Some components are photobioreactors, custom-printed bioplastic containers that focus sunlight to feed living microalgal cultures and release luminescent shades at night. Unfiltered urban air is dragged in at the bottom of each module. Air bubbles naturally rise through the watery medium within each photobioreactor thus coming into contact with the voracious microbes. CO₂ molecules and air pollutants are captured and stored by the algae and grow into now biomass. Freshly photosynthesised oxygen is released at the other end of the module and naturally channelled into the vast inner lobby of the tower. Here, a clean urban microclimate is synthesised onto which all inhabitable units can open (Figure 7).

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Figure 7.

ecoLogicStudio, PhotoSynthetica Tower, 2019. Image Vyonyx. Interior court of the PhotoSynthetica Tower with the view towards the Labs.

Other components become receptive to seeds and wild plants thus forming emerging artificial habitats. These biotopes will remain open to wildlife, including insects and migrating birds. The biomass that grows in all the active areas of the tower is made available to the occupants of the building itself, supplying a plethora of emerging activities and industries that will define the programmatic mix of the building itself and its occupational patterns, both in the case of human and non-human inhabitants.

Bio-digital research units, gardening centres, wildlife observation terraces, self-sufficient dwelling and a potentially infinite variety of other programmatic combinations will be supported by the continuous catalytic action of the tower that will constantly re-metabolise anthropic pollution as well as biotic contamination into local circular economies of raw materials, data and energy.

To promote the evolution of this concept, the authors have recently launched the PhotoSynthetica Venture, a transdisciplinary design innovation project. The venture in the last 2 years has built a series of large scale 1:1 demonstrators of photosynthetic building membranes, sometimes also referred to as photosynthetic urban curtains.

The first demonstrator was unveiled in November 2018 in Dublin, Ireland (Figure 8). The membrane, 32 m long and 7 m high, was designed specifically for the Climate-KIC, the European Union’s most prominent climate innovation initiative aimed at accelerating the adoption of nature-based solutions to tackle the global climate crisis.

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Figure 8.

ecoLogicStudio, PhotoSynthetica, Dublin, 2018. ©NAARO. Front view of the urban curtain pilot scheme.

Conceived as an ‘urban curtain’, PhotoSynthetica captures CO₂ from the atmosphere and stores it in real time at a rate of ∼1 k of CO₂ per day, equivalent to that of 20 large trees.

This unique curtain prototype composed of 16 modules, each 2 m wide and 7 m tall, envelopes the first and second floor of the main façade of the Printworks building at Dublin Castle. Each module functions as a photobioreactor, a digitally designed and fabricated bioplastic container that utilises daylight to feed the living microalgal cultures and releases luminescent shades at night.

Its main remit, in terms of performance, is to test the process described above in the PhotoSynthetica Tower, with unfiltered urban air in this case being introduced at the bottom of each of the PhotoSynthetica curtain modules. Similarly, CO2 molecules and air pollutants are captured and stored by the algae and grow into biomass. This can be harvested and employed in the production of raw material for bioplastic products, such as the main building material of the photobioreactor itself (in this project, the curtains were manufactured with a double layer of PolyAir bio-based plastic sheets).

To culminate the process, freshly photosynthesised oxygen is released at the top of the each façade unit of PhotoSynthetica and out into the urban microclimate. Thanks to their serpentine design, the modules optimise the carbon sequestration process, and the full curtain pattern is reminiscent of a large trading data chart that embodies Climate-KIC’s commitment to promote new models to solve the global climate crisis.

As a system, PhotoSynthetica ⁷ integrates three layers of functionality:

Wetware: the selection and management of the microalgae cultures.

There are significant economic, social, environmental and health benefits in the actualisation of PhotoSynthetica in this scenario and at the scale of large building facades. The project embodies the multi-generational long-term benefits of adopting a carbon-absorbing technology now, as it is 10 times more efficient at carbon sequestration than any other green technology currently based on conventional planting and large trees. This is due to the exceptional properties of the algal organisms whose cells are entirely photosynthetic. By comparison, large plants devote more than 90% of their mass to infrastructures that sustaining the needs to their complex organisms but have no direct contribution to solar energy capturing and air filtration.

Moreover, PhotoSynthetica brings algae farming to cities, with a dramatic increase in farming efficiency compared to current industry standards, as algae feed on what buildings expel, especially heath and CO2. In this sense, the project promotes the emergence of regional and local circular economies. Algae are a key ingredient in future bio-foams and bio-plastic industries. If we consider that the global algae farming industry is now already worth US$1 billion, it is easy to predict the economic benefits PhotoSynthetica would bring to cities and local communities.

The project also enables a sustainable food revolution, with particular advantages in terms of food security for the areas of the world particularly affected by the effects of climate change. Fresh and organic foods are often more expensive than less healthy options. Animal-based proteins also have an enormous impact on the environment. Traditional agriculture is failing in many areas affected by increasing draught and flooding. The algal output of our test bed is equivalent in vegetable proteins of 2 kg of meat per day, enough for 12 adults, with no animals being killed. Therefore, PhotoSynthetica enables growing high-quality urban vegetable proteins in an extremely efficient way (Figure 9).

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Figure 9.

ecoLogicStudio, PhotoSynthetica, Helsinki, 2019. Photo by Tuomas Uusheimo. Front view of the urban tiles pilot scheme.

The polycephalum machine

The PhotoSynthetica project is driven by a strong technological agenda and has such it can be defined a design innovation venture. However, at its core lies a fundamental realisation that the authors have matured in the last several years of design research.

Architectural technology must not lose sight of its aesthetical dimension, its beauty. It should be clear to all readers by now why this is so critical, especially in the Anthropocene age, a time when, perhaps paradoxically, the non-anthropocentric mode of reasoning is becoming ubiquitous.

PhotoSynthetica relies in its daily functioning on a combination of digital, human and non-human intelligence. Its crucial role is to interface these forms of reasoning, to create a channel of communication and cross fertilisation and to stimulate, in other words, our collective sensibility in recognising patterns of reasoning across disciplines, materialities and technological regimes.

To explore the significance of this specific take on the aesthetic dimension, the authors will illustrate in the following paragraphs two teaching-based research projects conducted predominantly within the Urban Morphogenesis Lab directed by Claudia Pasquero at the Bartlett school of Architecture in London and focussed on spatial cognition and bio-computation (Figure 10). This in-depth analysis lays the ground for the final section of this article focused on the most recent green planning projects conducted by the authors.

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Figure 10.

Urban Morphogenesis Lab, the Bartlett UCL. XenoDerma, 2018. Prototype of an architectural skin morphology developed through direct manipulation of the Asian fawn tarantula’s web-building behaviour. The hacking process involves an algorithmically simulated and 3D-printed space frame substratum that becomes part of the tarantula’s expanded perception of space.

The first project is called XenoDerma ⁸ and tests the incredible properties of spider silk and the morphogenesis of Asian Fawn spider’s webs.

XenoDerma, a project that was also included in the exhibition ‘La fabrique du vivant’ at the Centre Pompidou, mobilises animal intelligence. Spiders’ minds, in this instance Asian Fawn tarantula, do not completely reside in their bodies as their webs actually constitute a form of spatial thinking. ⁹ Information from the web becomes an integral part of their cognitive system. The behaviour of the spiders and the production of silk can thus be reprogrammed through the design of 3D-printed architectural substructures and their geometrical features.

The experiments developed for this project consciously seek a productive ambiguity, revealing in the alien beauty of silky morphologies, an intelligence that resides somewhere at the intersection of the biological, technological and digital realms. It is a new aesthetic of nature that is highlighted here to question its conventional meaning in the contemporary architectural discourse.

Even if ecoLogicStudio’s first experiments in bio-computation date more than 10 years ago, the authors’ earliest conceptualisation of these experiments as part of an architectural design model is found in an apparatus ¹⁰ named polycephalum machine.

At its core is a living biological organism called Physarum polycephalum (PP). PP is a single-cell organism which contains hundreds of thousands of tiny nuclei. Through their life cycle, there is a phase when the nuclei become afloat and are able to interact with each other by means of biochemical secretions, creating what computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky ¹¹ has defined as an ‘unconventional general-purpose computer’ (Figure 11).

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Figure 11.

Urban Morphogenesis Lab, the Bartlett UCL. Polycephalum Drawing, 2018 Bio-digital drawing developed through direct manipulation of the growth behaviour of Physarum polycephalum during plasmodium phase displaying distributed intelligence morphology.

PP accumulates traces in the environment that form a distributed spatial memory, its outsourced brain. It is through multiple local interactions among nuclei and environment that PP’s overall morphology emerges; these low-level interactions are critical for higher-level collective intelligence to evolve in the absence of a nervous system.

In one recent experiment presented originally at the Tallinn Biennale of Architecture 2017, curated by Claudia Pasquero and titled bio.Tallinn, ecoLogicStudio developed a 3D-printed substratum based on the urban morphology of Tallinn, Estonia’s capital. This was inoculated with PP. Remarkably PP’s networked body grew to resemble urban minimised detour networks, ¹² the ones that typically evolve in hundreds of years of urban growth and that connect all relevant resources with the minimum overall expenditure of energy.

However, a series of time-lapse videos ¹³ developed in collaboration with artist Heather Barnett revealed something altogether different. The true alien qualities of PP’s collective intelligence are clearly detectable in its behavioural morphologies when seen unfolding in time.

This realisation suggests that the true value of these design experiments has to be observed at the commensurable scale of the living organism, while carefully avoiding any form of human abstraction of its behaviour as a kind of biomimetic model. This would in fact imply extracting a special-case solution for a human-oriented problem.

The authors are, therefore, focusing on the observation of the diagrammatic capacity of the living system PP in the process of growing and slowly becoming part of an architectural apparatus. That is, of computing and solving architectural and urban problems. In the apparatus documented by Heather Barnett’s video, for instance, this means the process by which PP internalises the morphological and metabolic features of Tallinn within its distributed spatial memory, its actual non-human brain. This is achieved through a large number of low-level interactions among the PP’s nuclei and the 3D-printed substratum in the apparatus.

These aspects of the polycephalum machine experiments become a critical tool to focus and train a new design sensibility, apt at recognising patterns of reasoning across scalar, temporal and technological domains well beyond the classical ranges set by modern master planning.

These sensibilities are at work in two recent planning projects by ecoLogicStudio, bio.Tallinn and an ongoing collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, titled Deep Green.

Bio.Tallinn

Critically, and without many of us noticing, today we all inhabit the Urbansphere (see the Urbansphere, doctoral thesis by Marco Poletto http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:162673), the global apparatus of contemporary urbanity, a dense network of informational, material and energetic infrastructures that sustain our increasingly demanding metabolism.

Endosymbiotic relationships unexpectedly emerge among the Urbansphere’s heterogeneous components, especially when biological evolution negotiates contaminated habitats and ubiquitous forms of artificial intelligence. The authors have found a significant example of this condition in the city of Tallinn itself.

The emerging aesthetic qualities of the videos and drawings produced with the polycephalum machine have become in the context of the Bio. Tallinn project manifestoes for a drive towards progressively higher degrees of synthesis among the heterogeneous systems of the Urbansphere. PP’s alien beauty promotes the emergence of a novel aesthetic value system in architecture that, in this project, projects the image of Tallinn’s future ecological infrastructure.

Diving into the microscopic world of PP’s distributed intelligence challenges, the logics of traditional planning processes laying the ground for a co-evolutionary architecture that can be grown by an extended cohort of bio-citizens. Strategic planning is thus interfaced directly with the material processes and related molecular transactions that underpin a new urban morphogenesis.

In 2018, the Bio. Tallinn project was further developed by ecoLogicStudio as part of a research aiming at developing the first comprehensive blue–green plan for the Estonian capital. Just like in PP, the emerging urban forms of future Bio.Tallinn manifest into the pulsating rhythms of the city’s blue–green infrastructure, in the morphological convolutedness of the city’s networks and even in the ungraspable fuzziness of its physical boundaries, all of which defy both the classical canons of beauty and the rational logics of efficient engineering.

So while typical blue–green urban planning still promotes a typologically driven design methodology that has not evolved much since the time of the Garden City movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ecoLogicStudio’s new bio-digital plan for Tallinn shows the dawn of a new paradigm that recognises the opportunities offered by the inevitable merging of digital and biological intelligence in the Urbansphere.

It is from this perspective that the authors see in PP’s aesthetic an instrument to define a novel value system for architecture to evolve cities’ actual ecological intelligence. Perhaps the beauty of PP rests precisely in its ability to solve the liminal condition between infrastructure and landscape, that fuzzy zone where its networked body becomes distributed intelligence. In doing so, it provides a new aesthetic canon for post-Anthropocene architectural and urban design.

Can this aesthetic canon promote a new planning sensibility, based on the application of artificial and biological intelligence, and capable of tackling the global problem of designing sustainable and resilient cities? In other words, can it provide a scalable global design toolkit that is sensitive to local stimuli and unique socio-cultural patterns?

These questions, while have no definitive answer, are currently driving the authors’ research and an ongoing collaboration with UNDP, titled Deep Green. This project is primarily devoted to the application of AI to the so-called blue–green planning of cities, with particular focus on fast-growing cities in developing countries and on the scalability of the method towards its global application (Figure 12).

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Figure 12.

ecoLogicStudio, Deep Green Project. UNDP 2020. Local to municipal waste collection networks in the city of Guatemala. Image algorithmically computed from GIS map, satellite map and DEM model analysis by means of minimal path algorithm. The analysis also takes into account the result of the local waste collection analysis.

Deep Green

Currently, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and it is expected to double by 2050. Cities and city regions today are at the forefront in the fight to offset the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change.

On the one end, cities are the biggest CO₂ emitters globally, and therefore, it is necessary to redesign their infrastructural apparatus for carbon neutrality and material and energetic circularity. In other words, it is critical for cities to learn to convert what they now expel, as waste or pollution, into raw material to feed new processes of production.

This entails innovative strategies of waste management, water conservation and recycling, renewable energy production and trading. It also involves implementing technologies for the filtration and re-metabolisation of air pollution.

On the other end, cities are also our most effective refuge from the potentially devastating effects of climate change. This is particularly true for those regions of the world that are most vulnerable to draught, flooding and famine.

We can design resilient cities that use their size and collective energy to create refuge for both humans and displaced wildlife, that promote the emergence of positive microclimate, that replenish depleted water sources and that restore degraded terrains, pushing back on processes, such as desertification, land erosion and contamination.

This entails innovative strategies of urban re-greening and re-wilding as well as of urban agriculture. As mentioned before, the problems affecting our cities are also the problems facing humankind as a whole, after all we all inhabit what the authors have named the Urbansphere and that is why a global model of green city planning is required.

A critical quality of urban planning today is to mobilise collective agency and intelligence to face the challenges ahead. In this way, local solutions can be evolved in response to the given challenge.

In this recent collaboration with UNDP, ecoLogicStudio has been testing the potential of AI to develop a new green planning interface (Figure 13). This planning solution combines the scalability of a sophisticated planning application to the design sensibility and intuitive accessibility of its design interface. This enables a high degree of customisation and evolution to each specific urban application or urban design solution.

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Figure 13.

ecoLogicStudio, Deep Green Project. UNDP 2020. Water flow pattern analysis of the territory surrounding the city of Guatemala. The image is a false colour rendering of the mesh derived from NASA’s global Digital Elevation Model.

At its core, this application uses algorithms to analyse high-resolution data on urban landscape and infrastructure (mostly available open source even for rather remote and underdeveloped regions of the world) to produce simulated scenarios of sustainable urban development (Figure 14).

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Figure 14.

ecoLogicStudio, Deep Green Project. UNDP 2020. Workflow schematic of the Deep Green tool internal architecture, illustrating the key input data sources, the main analytical layers, the network analysis and the urban simulated output.

These simulations have three key characteristics:

They are open to multiple external inputs, that is, all urban stakeholders can interact with several layers of data and see the effects of their actions on the proposed planning scenarios;

As demonstrated by our test run with early adopter cities, such as Aarhus, Tallinn, Barcelona, Caracas, Guatemala and Mogadishu, our design scenarios break the uneven distribution of resources to simulate the evolution of restorative urban networks. This process implies questioning traditional planning concepts, such as zone, boundary, scale, typology and programme. Such outdated notions actually constrain the emergence of a truly systemic approach to urbanisation, one that recognises the true nature of contemporary cities as complex dynamical systems.

This issue is most evident in the case of Guatemala City. Guatemala City is situated on a complex and highly unstable terrain surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, some of which are still active. Its ecosystems, originally very rich in biodiversity, are now made fragile by unchecked urbanisation and, given its climatic zone, the effects of climate change.

In Guatemala City, this scenario is exacerbated by a serious lack of waste management. The Guatemala City garbage dump is the biggest landfill in Central America containing over one-third of the total garbage in the country. In total, 99% of Guatemala’s 2240 garbage sites have no environmental systems and are classified as ‘illegal’. Only a new design methodology powered by big data gathering and the production of ad hoc algorithmic design scenarios can deal with such complexity and level of informality.

Our approach creates an interface between the bottom-up processes of self-organisation, such as many local waste recycling activities that are emerging out of necessity in the areas closer to the dumping sites, and the strategic decision-making that occurs at municipal, national and international level.

The aim is to find new synergies and direct investments where and when they have the most potential to engender positive change. This scenario was investigated further as part of a recent design studio conducted by the authors at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, IAAC (Figure 15).

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Figure 15.

Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) Introductory Studio 2019. La Republica Alimentaria. La Republica Alimentaria, simulated plan for extended urban agriculture in Guatemala City. Proposed application of the Deep Green tool to tackle the issue of food security. The plan illustrates the territory of Guatemala City as a potential for growing the three main staple foods for the city. It also simulates the interaction between the plots and the existing urban infrastructure to support the emergence of a local market of produce distributed in key areas of the city where low-income population is at high risk of starvation.

Two proposals emerged in this analysis of Guatemala City: a rewilding plan fosters a new coexistence between human and urban wild animals, and an urban agriculture plan proposing a method to guarantee food security and to employ the impoverished rural population currently migrating to the city of Guatemala.

Both proposals are sensitive to local conditions while effecting international power relationships. For instance, the migrating birds populating the green areas of Guatemala City migrate to and from Canada. Therefore, investments in urban rewilding will have benefit in the biodiversity of Canada. Migrant workers cross the city on their way to the US–Mexico border. Urban agricultural plans could retain rural workers alleviating the pressure on both Mexico and the United States.

Such synergies have the potential to channel significant international funds to local projects, improving the life of citizens of Guatemala City.

Similarly in Mogadishu, another case study investigated by ecoLogicStudio with UNDP, land degradation is a key environmental issue and is closely related to desertification, drought and unsustainable livestock and agricultural practices. The problem is exacerbated by a completely horizontal development of the city and the critical lack of water. Vegetation is so sparse that its restorative effect becomes negligible.

In ecoLogicStudio’s proposal, a bottom-up water collection and filtration network is computed to optimise its performance in relationship to existing urban density and road networks connectivity. This is then reinforced by a large-scale regreening strategy aims at creating dense networks of plants in proximity to the areas of collection, thus promoting the emergence of restorative microclimates and ecological niches.

Crucially here, ecoLogicStudio’s algorithmic interface allows the simultaneous computation and optimisation of contrasting parameters and the development of a multi-scalar approach. The urban regreening strategy has therefore multiple hierarchies. Locally it recognises gaps in the urban vegetation and gives guidance for the planting of trees in optimal locations. At the scale of neighbourhood, it optimises the location of water collections points serving the existing buildings. At the urban scale, it fosters densifications of the vegetated network to promote the emergence of ecological niches and local microclimates, especially around water collection zones. At the territorial scale, it promotes the emergence of a barrier, natural and man-made, to push back desertification and restore some of the abandoned agricultural plots as well as the infrastructural networks of canals and water wells.

Conclusion

At the end of this journey along the authors’ recent practice, we are ready to draw a few concluding remarks that are driving our current and future experimentation.

As we mentioned at the beginning, we now believe that a key remit of our practice is training our sensibility (as well as one of our partners and clients) at recognising patterns of reasoning across disciplines, materialities and technological regimes, thus expanding the practice’s repertoire of aesthetic qualities.

Aesthetic here is intended as a meta-language, enabling a more sophisticated level of communication with the non-human. It is therefore no longer a case of architecture being inspired by other disciplines, such as biology and computer science, and striving to become biomimetic of biophilic. Rather it is time to realise what architecture can give to these other disciplines, precisely because of its self-contained artificiality, in terms of contributing to their actualisation in a new and reimagined spatial reality. Architecture as an embedded algorithm acquires its own non-human intelligence and sensitivity, which must be patiently trained and cultivated.

For this reason, the authors feel that it is critical to avoid the trap of simply borrowing ever new tools and technologies and apply them to the solution of ever-increasing architectural challenges. Rather it is critical to deploy them as techniques to access the in-human, to shift perspective beyond the boundaries of the rational. Such shift has the power to greatly expand the space of solutions by re-problematising given problems.

And there has never been a more significant time for architects to claim this fundamental societal role.