Archinect - Features

'Beauty Is a Measure of Ecological Intelligence'; A Conversation with ecoLogicStudio Founders Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto

2023-07-31T09:00:00-04:00

Against the backdrop of a frenzied AI discourse dominated by end-product tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto articulate a refreshing call to adventure. The two ecoLogicStudio founders have built their professional and academic careers at the intersection of computation and biology, allowing them to articulate a vision of artificial intelligence that, in their words, "is more like a slime mold, a spider's web, a microalgae colony, or a mycelium network." Here, the computational and biological find common ground in their use of patterns as meta-language; a commonality that, when pushed, invites both human and non-human designers to shape the built environment as an organism itself rather than a static entity enlivened only by our own mechanics.

For Pasquero and Poletto, this is no theoretical exercise. ecoLogicStudio has already won wide acclaim for its real-world applications of ecological systems in the built environment while also articulating ...

AN.ONYMOUS Architects Show Us How Obstacles Make for Better Projects

2018-04-16T09:00:00-04:00

AN.ONYMOUS is a transdisciplinary design firm based in Los Angeles and New York. Founded by Iman Ansari and Marta Nowak, the studio focuses on speculative approaches towards architecture and urbanism in relation to ecology, technology and biology. Since its inception in 2012, AN.ONYMOUS has engaged in numerous international projects, encompassing a diverse range of scales from urban and architectural design to furniture and prosthetics.

For this week's Small Studio Snapshots, we talk with the duo about growing a small practice and embracing all of the obstacles along the way.

Architecture of the Anthropocene, Pt. 2: Haunted Houses, Living Buildings, and Other Horror Stories

2014-11-25T10:09:00-05:00

In horror fiction, a house is usually haunted in one of two ways: either a building is inhabited by the ghosts of dead humans, or the structure itself is animated by a strange, non-human life. Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” an influential achievement of the genre, falls into the latter camp; the horror of the House of Usher can never be properly pinned down because it pervades the setting itself. But what’s so scary about a living building?