STEMcloud v2.0 / ecoLogicStudio
After meeting Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, founders of ecoLogicStudio at the Beyond Media Festival in Florence, they talked to us about one of their latest projects, the STEMcloud v2.0 that now we want to share here, as is a really new and avant-garde vision about parametric and genetic architecture and the way that human interaction can bring new life to architecture projects:
The STEMcloud v2.0 project proposes the development and testing of an architectural prototype operating as an oxygen making machine. The project has been presented and designed for the SEVILLE ART and ARCHITECTURAL BIENNALE 2008.
STEMcloud v2.0 technological matrix will operate as a breeding ground for micro-ecologies found in the local river of Seville, the Guadalquivir, and will involve the public in the breeding process. The transparency and porosity of the architectural system allows the process to be visually and materially exposed and interfere with the microclimate of the gallery; the public will feed the colonies present in the river water with nutrients, light and CO2 and as a result oxygenate the gallery space; the growth process will be triggered by patterns of interaction with the public and in turn will affects these patterns with its visual effects. Multiple feedback cycles are provoked within the components of the system, with the gallery environment and within the city itself.
This extended model of systemic architecture can be framed and understood in cybernetic terms as a multilayer crossing of feedback loops; cybernetics provides an operational framework to deal with change and transformation, the two main defining qualities of our new ecologic understanding of architecture; the starting point of the experiment is artificially defined by us and provides what scientist call a primed condition necessary to promote interaction.
The cybernetic loops
The basic cybernetic set for the Seville experiment includes 3 components: the urban environments (the river ecology and the gallery space), the architectural machine (STEMcloud) and human behaviour (the visitors). These systems are multilayered and diverse and they will interact in a variety of ways: in this sense we can consider the experiment as complex and the outcome of it unpredictable. It is impossible to tell what kind of equilibrium will emerge within each of the 3 systems; what kind of algae ecologies will grow? How will visitors be reacting to them? In the impossibility of control the experiment is about communication: STEMcloud is organized to allow and promote communication among the systems in such a way that a conversation/learning process could emerge. Visitors will be transformed in ecologists, the STEM blocks into microhabitats, the gallery into an oxygenating garden or, perhaps, laboratory. The priming of the system and the channels of communication between systems have been carefully designed and engineered and can be summarized as a series of feedback loops within the more generic cybernetic set previously described.
Machinic feedback cycle 1: organic growth in relationship to radiation field
Wide spectrum light is positioned strategically to generate a radiation field, kept constant in time. Algae growth is stimulated by the field and will respond to it; feedback arises while each block develops his own internal equilibrium.
Machinic feedback cycle 2: organic growth in relationship to nutrients concentration
Nutrients is inserted into the system to prime its starting condition. More active blocks will consume more nutrients and grow faster. Overgrown blocks will be more opaque to light affecting the radiation field. Coordination between nutrient and radiation will push the differentiation further.
Machinic feedback cycle 3: oxygenation to frequency of use
Photosynthetic activity will be monitored live and visually fed back to the user. More active block will signal the need to be fed with CO2 provided by the user. Users will respond to visual clues (LED intensity) and trigger modifications with their action.
The project was just awesome!!
visual monitoring of opaque blocks in terms of comparative studies with relation to, and contextually; transparency…aka O2 challenges, has to be the most site specific way to evaluate architectural space in terms of environmental factors…would love to know this method might be optionally incorporated into procurement, focus being at planning stages of a new build, or regeneration sites, especially with regards to foundation studies akin to ventilation and lighting…this truly is angel hair in the architecture
I’m sorry, maybe it’s just me, but I fail to see what’s interesting about this project. Plants emit oxygen, we absorb oxygen, we emit carbon dioxide, plants absorb carbon dioxide. Kimbo, I have no idea what you said. Can we forego the archi-speak, it gives me a headache. It seems the only thing this project really does is change its opacity and transparency based on the growth of the algae. Unfortunately, the form and configuration chosen by Pasquero and Poletto does more to obscure these changes – I haven’t seen this in person so the effects may be more apparent than the images portray – than emphasize them. I dare say a few fish tanks would do a better job of communicating than the chosen form. There’s potential here, but obscuring such a simple concept with inflated language and obtuse formal representation doesn’t equal awesomeness.
tommy, i think you miss the interdisciplinary notions here, and layered uses of this presentation…did you notice how the space is mapped purely by participatory user intervention? …and how such defines space usage in terms of opacity and transparency?
Ok, what are these interdisciplinary notions you speak of, or the layered uses? As far as the mapping you mention, I’m not convinced, not does it seem all that interesting. So, some blocks are more opaque because a person is breathing more often or heavier around them, or by your ‘participatory user intervention.’ It’s a one trick pony. My mirror fogs up when I breath on it. I also don’t see how this process altered the use of the space. I can’t tell from the images, but it appears to be visitors just milling around this thing. There’s a lot being done with algae for energy production but this doesn’t qualify as anything valuable, and quite frankly, it seems more effort was put into making the containers of algae look more elaborate to hide an otherwise common process. No, in my opinion, there’s not much here. But, hey, mad props for the trippy algae container thing. Reminds me of a Dale Chihuly chandelier. Sorry, Dale.
notions of essence, synergy, if…
Could be interesting in terms of evaluation with regards to space~usage statistics. It is a contra indication of good design to utilise space in terms of grasping spatiality after boundary marcation…STEMcloud might be better appropriated by interior designers, who, with such statistics would maximise ‘opacity’ in terms of tried and tested natural human zones, and those of ‘transparentness’ as valued non human zones which might include open space or closed zones for specificity…after day 2 of musing STEMcloud, their statisitical opacity zones have evolved, for me, into gravitational linger, savour, touch spaces for human intervention, all through actualised social synergy…now how often do architects get that kind of layered knowledge, and human mapping data as a development tool for post conceptual contemplation ~ of a common thought?
ps. your mirror fog is your fog, not a socially conscious fog…
The only synergy i can see is simple technical/natural process + fancy design + good communication…
Alvar Aalto was long ago involving users in the outdoor design, letting them make their own way in the grass, which would by iterations mark the main paths…
I think you put too much hope in what is nothing more than a fancy pergola, or a green wall. Ok the time scale is interesting, but i doubt any kid will say : “oh look dad, what a wonderful pack of notions !”. There is nothing bad in this project, but i’m not comfortable with the speech. I don’t know if it’s from the architects themselves, but it sounds like being too much inlove with that stuff, thus forgetting what is done, or was done already elsewhere.
I agree with Tommy, it is a simple photosynthesis with blob shapes and colorful lights. I like though the idea of trying to make it architecture, but the architects try to do too much in my opinion, and i find that also in the way the project is sold through the text: too much grandiloquence and misuse of terms such as “genetic architecture”…
I see nothing genetic here so far (i had the opportunity to study that after a 1.5 year thesis about influence of sciences on new architecture) but it sounds probably better than “natural architecture”.
I agree with tommy and archilocus it´s plain non sense, what can you expect from STEMcloud v2.0 / ecoLogicStudio!
please find something usefull to do, don´t mix architecture with snobbery.
As an architectural experiment it’s interesting to see how architecture respond to instant human ubiquity in a way is not actually happening in mainstream architecture, on the other hand this “sci-arch weird looking thing” always seems to trickle grasping reality in which is no more than a prototype lacking applicability out side of its own conceptualizations, therefore ending at an amusement like display for wondering people.
I find the new direction in architecture interesting, but it is really no different than the previous ‘blobitecture’ movement of the early nineties, despite the attempt to sheathe it with a veneer of intellectualism. How is this space going to be used? its purely a machine; what kind of program will it house? How would people live in such an object?
There are very few projects that incorporate parametric design that do not simply become a pastiche. Its a methodology best suited for interior design of ‘environments’ and is pushed by academics in a search for an intellectual autonomy.
its pretty, but how would one use this as a school? or even as a museum or theater? don’t be fooled by the archispeak, its the High Victorian of the new century.
Very good !