Canada brings living experiment to the Venice Architecture Biennale

A job as a gallery attendant is rarely, if ever, a high-stakes occupation. But at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the folks working the Canada Pavilion have been tasked with an unusual set of responsibilities. In the most literal of terms, it's partly up to them to keep the show alive.

The exhibition is called Picoplanktonics, and it centres on living artworks — 3D printed structures which have been infused with microorganisms. The show offers a vision of a radically sustainable future, one where homes, office towers — perhaps entire cities — could be constructed in collaboration with nature. 

Inside the pavilion, a pair of trunk-like columns spring from a shallow salt-water pool, mimicking the tall bagalaro trees that are a famous integrated feature of the building's design, and at the entrance, nine smaller specimens have been stacked in climate-controlled tanks. On the way out, visitors will encounter a functioning lab and even more of these 3D "bioprints," left to the elements in the outdoor courtyard.

All of the works installed for the show are expected to grow and change between now and November, when the international exhibition of contemporary architecture closes. Perhaps they'll even die and crumble. But all the while, the gallery attendants will serve as devoted caretakers. They'll adjust the light, temperature, humidity and pH levels — tending to the structures' needs as best they can.

Michelle Chawla is the director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts and she was in Venice Saturday for the show's inauguration. The feeling inside the Canada Pavilion is surreal, she says. The air is humid and you can hear the flow of water. The lattice-like architectural forms — mostly green with a pinkish undertone — are beautiful in a strange, science fiction sort of way. 

"It felt like … you were projecting yourself into the future, what a future city could look like in a hundred years," says Chawla. And that vision wouldn't be complete without the presence of the gallery attendants who are busily working on the floor.

"The concept is, in the future, if we use these organisms as part of our built materials — our buildings — the people living in those buildings have to look after them because they're living organisms," says Chawla. 

It's a powerful notion, she says. Lots of people will say they care about the environment, but what does that look like in action? At the Canada Pavilion, you just have to look to the gallery attendants to understand. They might be right there in front of you, hard at work — not simply maintaining the built environment, but actively nurturing its growth.

Canadian biodesigner Andrea Shin Ling will be working alongside the caretakers while she's visiting Venice. Ling is the leader of Living Room Collective, the group of architects, scientists, artists and educators who were commissioned to bring Picoplanktonics to the biennale, and she arrived in the city last month to install the exhibition. 

The exhibition highlights research Ling has developed at the Institute of Technology & Architecture and the Advanced Engineering with Living Materials (ALIVE) initiative at ETH Zurich. And the prototype material which is being showcased in Venice contains live cyanobacteria: Synechococcus PCC 7002, a species of blue-green algae, or picoplankton, which is found in the ocean. 

The creatures are capable of something called dual carbon sequestration, says Ling. Through photosynthesis, they metabolize carbon dioxide, thus reducing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and the largest of the living sculptures appearing in the exhibition is capable of capturing the same amount of carbon as a 20-year-old pine tree (up to 18 kg of CO2 a year, according to the project's website). The picoplankton selected for the project is an ideal collaborator for more than one reason, however. It's also capable of a process called biocementation. When it takes in CO2, it produces carbonate minerals — stuff which strengthens the structures Ling has 3D printed in her lab. 

Four years ago, when Ling began her research at ETH Zurich, her first bioprints were "at Petri dish scale." The forms appearing at the biennial are unprecedented in size, she explains; the biggest is 3.3 metres tall. And the entire exhibition doubles an experiment, says Ling. Over the next few months, she and her team will be paying close attention to everything on site, as live data is sent back to their lab. "Some of the structures will thrive, and some of them will fall apart," she says. "It is a changing exhibit."

"The colour of the structures is a very quick and easy way for us to assess the health," Ling explains. If the cyanobacteria populations are thriving, the sculptures will develop a rich green colour — "like a dark emerald," she says. Pink and yellow are warning signs. If those hues appear, the little guys are ailing.

Ling is more than OK with that outcome, however. To live is to die, and much of her research is interested in the nature of decomposition. "Decay is regenerative," says Ling. "Out of rot, you get new growth." And one of the ideas she's raising through the exhibition is the notion that architects can learn from biological processes. What if we could co-operate or collaborate with the environment when we make something new? Could it lead to something esthetically intriguing — like the structures appearing at the pavilion? Could that approach help us repair damage that's already been done to the planet?

"We're trying to gain insights on how to work with these materials at such a large scale," says Ling, and beyond testing the viability of the bioprints, she and her colleagues are also curious about the audience response to the exhibition. "If you were to actually integrate a living material into a building, what does it mean for the occupant when part of your building always has to be wet or humid?" 

That said, the environment inside the Canada Pavilion sounds reasonably comfortable for visitors. The bioprints are expected to thrive in conditions similar to the natural climate in Venice, says Ling, and though the building has been adapted for the exhibition's needs, the temperature inside is being kept at 21 degrees Celsius, with 75 to 80 per cent relative humidity. "We're designing something [where] the bacteria can grow, but also that humans can occupy," says Ling. "It doesn't feel like a sauna or a steam bath."

In a real-world scenario, Ling imagines similar bioprints could be used to rid the air of excess CO2. They might take the form of architectural cladding, she says, and she and her collaborators in Switzerland are developing a "slightly different material system" to that end. "We're hoping that this type of research can spread and go to other institutions so that more people are working on this," she says.

"We just really hope that people are inspired by the project and really start to look at architecture, at the possibility of using biological systems in architecture more seriously," says Ling. "[It's] something that could actually be a reality in the future with enough investment and commitment."