Cryo­florE: on cyber garden­ing the city

Share this webpage

Add to favorites

Here is a utopia, in the best sense of the word. This model repres­ents the living proto­type of a city where build­ings are inhab­ited by humans, but also by algae and cyanobac­teria that capture carbon and energy. This is a new paradigm for urban design, where the bound­ar­ies between the living and the arti­fi­cial are finally tran­scen­ded. By combin­ing compu­ta­tional design and systems integ­rat­ing biod­iversity, this install­a­tion paves the way for the design of cities where energy networks are visible because they are beau­ti­ful, abund­ant and sustain­able.

This hexagonal proto­type, composed of modu­lar panels, demon­strates how biocata­lytic energy systems can be integ­rated into archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning. Each sector of the city, repres­en­ted by a panel, can host a complex bio-energy produc­tion network. The conduct­ive circuits, etched into a biode­grad­able frame with a dense trian­gu­lar lattice struc­ture, form path­ways that mimic those developed by living systems such as slime molds. Their design ensures a network that is both func­tional and dynamic, capable of optim­ising flows.

These circuits are popu­lated with photo­syn­thetic organ­isms: 3D-prin­ted biogel compon­ents, ranging from three to twelve centi­metres in length, house cyanobac­teria and algae. These organ­isms are capable not only of filter­ing air pollut­ants and captur­ing carbon diox­ide but also of produ­cing energy. The produc­tion system relies on the inter­ac­tion between anodes and cath­odes, in the form of nodes posi­tioned at key points in the struc­ture. These nodes facil­it­ate biocata­lysis, which converts solar energy captured by the biogel compon­ents into elec­tri­city. The inclu­sion of inter­act­ive LEDs and integ­rated monit­ors allows visit­ors to track the energy flows gener­ated by the network in real time, making the bio-energy processes tangible and enga­ging.

Design team : Prof. Claudia Pasquero, Dr. Marco Poletto, Aless­andra Poletto, Beat­riz Gonza­lez Arech­iga, Jasper Zehet­gruber, Korb­in­ian Enzinger, Xiao Wang, Mika Schulz, Michael Unter­ber­ger, Luis Pitter­lein, Bo Liu.