H.O.R.T.U.S., a cyber garden

Being active in a new relationship between nature and technology should not involve donning a white lab coat in a chilly room remote from public meeting space. Anyone can do it. H.O.R.T.U. S., the new exhibition at the Architectural Association (to 11 February) by London-based EcoLogic Studio (Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto) proves that in a delightfully engaging way.

Above a sea of green carpet rolled in places into seating, 325 transparent bags - photobioreactors containing nine different types of algae ranging from mint green to delicate pink, to more murky brown - hang from a catenary structure of acrylic rope. Each one has a long clear plastic tube EcoLogic encourages you to blow on, assisting the oxygenation and growth of the algae nurtured by your carbon dioxide. Each photobioreactor has a QR code – the square one mainly used in smart phone-enabled retail, on its side. By scanning the code, visitors with a smart phone can access on their phone a page of information about the algae they fostered. They can also send a Tweet about their action. A screen in the exhibition shows a dynamic 3dscape – a virtual garden – which reacts to the amount of interaction by visitors with the algae. In the H.O.R.T.U.S. world (Hydro Organism Responsive to Urban Stimuli), biology becomes architectural, and architecture becomes biology, in a generative, open source of knowledge exchange.

Here and there are 25 larger photoreactors ("briccole") of bacteria automatically fed through a continuous pump with air from the oxygen released. This multitude of kit appears more like a growing array of plants you can sit underneath, either alone or with others, in a space with a friendly air, and a sense that something is happening. You can see the colours changing. "You are in an oxygenated room – a garden", says Poletto. "It's the place to be in the morning!". There are ceiling-hung spectrum light strips of the kind found in greenhouses, supported by natural light coming in from three windows overlooking the Georgian garden square. "We always have this physical and virtual garden in our installations", explains Pasquero, "because we believe this helps. They (visitors) become familiar with the elements and the process and can interact in a more knowledgeable way".

"You become a cyber gardener", she explains, with the hands-on nature of the project encouraging many forms of self-organisation. The 3dscape (on a screen on a metal "stalk") shows accumulated portraits of the gardeners, as, one by one, they tweet and thereby become part of the changing landscape. Before, interactive installations involved loads of sensors, but H.O.R.T.U.S. is more easy to play with - an open source means of playing with information. "The project makes you think about farming and gardening, but there is another level where knowledge can be disseminated and exchanged, and it's a virtual cultivation of knowledge. Media technologies and material systems come together."

Algae are micro-organisms, ubiquitous in nature, and algae farming for food, as alternative fuel and other uses, is a booming industry. At the exhibition opening the "garden" was full of people of all ages relaxing by it or under it and moving through it. When approached for comments, visitors were not so concerned about the issue of commercial application, but were vocal on the significance of putting algae into an architectural system. "At first I thought that it was kind of crazy", felt Tomasz Mlynarski, an architect who trained at the AA. "It interacts with its environments so it's almost like a joke about the state of architecture at the moment. Everyone wants to interact with the environment: it's a very literal way of relating to biology."

"They (EcoLogic Studio) are researching the future", said Tommaso Principi, architect and Partner in Open Building Research, the Genoa-based practice which has now expanded to London. "It's a very good synthesis between continuity and conscience, good design and interaction", he felt. "This approach is something between an art installation and architecture". Could it be part of future architecture? Yes, as "a prototype of a new interface between inside and outside. There are no other Italian architects who work in quite this way".

Liam Young, architect and Unit Master of Diploma Unit 6 at the AA was "intrigued by the idea of a digital landscape". We tend to think of nature as a rarified thing, but the exhibition shows explicitly "that a natural system and a technological system are becoming increasingly blurred. They've become outmoded terms. It's difficult to describe the algae as natural elements, or as not purely artifice." It has a wider significance: "this is a little microcosm of what's going on outside this room, as every system is mediated." Architect Eva Sopeoglou, a PhD student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, felt the interplay between nature and technology was exciting. Like a real garden, the exhibition "was a space for contemplation. I like the fact that you can sit down here and listen to techno music, and contemplate the idea of being in a techno garden".

For Enrico Dini, architect, Chairman of D-Shape based in London, consultants of a new robotic building system, H.O.R.T.U.S, was a shock to his system: "my first sensation was that I felt inadequate. It's very futuristic, but now the future is becoming normal. It's a bit disquieting, because it's food, design, a shape. I have a few friends teaching on the subject of biology and genetics applied to architecture – these topics used to be so far away from it. If you want to be a good architect you must now understand genetics, algorithms, CNC processes, mechatronics. Now I see algae – biology – is nearly into the field of architecture, the mother of generating things. Maybe someone will see this as profitable." Lucy Bullivant

H.O.R.T.U.S
Hydro. Organisms. Responsive. To. Urban. Stimuli
Architectural Association
14.01.2012 - 11.02.2012

Design: ecoLogicStudio: Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto With: Andrea Bugli, Philippos Philippidis, Mirco Bianchini.
With the support of: Catherine Legrand [Evolution Biology], Scottish Marine Institute [Algal Biodiversity], Simon Park [Bioluminescence], Mats Brodén [Knowledge sharing], Immanuel Koh [digital interfaces]
Special thanks to: David Crooks [Fluid Structures], AA digital platforms, AA exhibition, AA prototyping LAB, AA INTER10 students