Venice Biennale of Architecture, May 10th - Nov. 23rd, 2025.
19th International Architecture Exhibition: Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
Coding Plants: An Artificial Reef and Living Kelp Archive
In the future, libraries won’t be built, but grown. Here, botanical elements will be genetically augmented to store the knowledge of specific architectural forms—houses, bridges, communal spaces, etc.—that can be extracted and used to challenge polluting construction methods. The goal is to design urban environments that adapt and evolve in balance with their surrounding ecosystems. Plants will function as living archives, encoding detailed information within their DNA to allow users to influence and direct their growth and structure. This approach integrates radical sustainability directly into a semi-natural ecosystem, creating a harmonious blend of hybrid nature and human innovation.
Coding Plants is a synthetic living reef that is the ultimate archive preserving design knowledge. A single gram of plant DNA can, at least theoretically, store up to 215 million gigabytes of data. By embedding design knowledge into living organisms, Coding Plants is a suppositional green architectural agenda in which nature is empowered on the genetic level. While this may seem hypothetical, it is grounded in recent breakthroughs in genetic engineering. This approach heralds a living architecture that profoundly rethinks conventional building practices while fostering resilience and ecosystem integration.
Coding Plants is a semi-natural kelp reef in which architectural records become edible proteins. Encased within vitrines is a collection of suspended, self-contained hybridised organisms that showcase dynamic natural processes. Scientists have injected encoded information—comprising text, images, and drawings—into the genetic material of this novel vegetation, making the reef into a living comprehensive library.
Credits: Terreform ONE
Mitchell Joachim, Peder Anker, Melanie Fessel, Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky.
Studio: Vivian Kuan (Executive Director), Julie Bleha.
Design: David Paraschiv, Emily Young, Sky Achitoff, Avantika Velho, JJ Zhijie Jin.
Science: Oliver Medvedik, Sebastian Cocioba.
Collaborators: Wendy W. Fok, WE-DESIGNS.
Media: Michelle Alves De Lima.
Research: Nicholas Lynch, Marina Ongaro, Ava Hudson. Jerzelle Lim, Helen Gui.
Sponsors: U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, New York University, NYU Global Research Initiatives in the Office of the Provost, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences.
Special Thanks:
Carlo Ratti, Curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition. Victoria Rosner, Dean of Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
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