The Living

Alive: A New Spatial Contract for Multispecies Architecture explores architecture for promoting diverse microbial communities through the calibration of texture, light, and air flow. It imagines a new direction for probiotic buildings and multispecies architecture. As a prototype for twenty-first-century living architecture, it involves a room made of textured, porous, organic material that provides abundant surface area and many different microclimates for many types of microbes. This architecture includes both macro-spaces for humans and micro-spaces for microbes as well as material interfaces for exchanges among these different species. In a broader sense, the project is a prototype for a new spatial contract. It also connects the idea of living together to concepts about diverse microbial communities—as well as concepts about diverse, human communities; sharing tactile experiences; and Venice as a historical site of exchange.