For this exhibition, Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN presents the Transspecies Palace with the mechanical and hydrothermal conditions necessary to multiply the diversity and density of a community of aerobic and anaerobic organisms. In other words, it presents a microbial community with the ability to mitigate the toxicity of damaged environments and aid in their ecological repair.
This prototype is formed by a thick bark of various types of cork that captures and retains mineral, saccharose, and lipid particles thanks to the cavities within its porous structure. This facilitates and accelerates the settlement of bacteria in the cork. Under the right conditions, bacteria form an exopolysaccharide matrix that provides the genetic and physical structure where carbon is retained and oxygen is produced.
The Transspecies Palace demonstrates how human life and social relations expand beyond bodies, where these elements are distributed and transscalar representations. In turn, it marks a transition from an architecture of carbonization and exploitation to an architecture of mutual care.
The Transspecies Palace by Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN. Photograph by José Hevia.
Project description by Andrés Jaque / OFFPOLINN
The Transspecies Palace provides the mechanical and hydrothermal conditions to multiply the diversity and density of a microbial community of aerobic and anaerobic life, including cyanobacteria, phylum proteobacteria, firmicutes, photoautotrophic bacteria, chemoautotrophic bacteria, azotobacter, beijerinckia, clostridium and rhizobium. Together, this microbial community has the capacity to metabolize the toxicity of damaged environments and contribute to their ecological reparation.
Its thick cork crust, developed by a multidisciplinary team led by OFFPOLINN and first tested in the facade of Reggio School in Madrid. It captures and retains mineral, sucrose and lipid particles in the irregularity of the cork mass. The types of cork selected provide a spectrum of cavities within the porous cork structure that facilitate and accelerate the growth of fungi hyphae, which are later used as a system of fungi highways, that allows bacteria to settle inside the cork.
In conditions of sustained humidity, and anchored to the interior of hypha walls, a diversity of bacteria collaborate to build an exopolysaccharide matrix. These are sophisticated informational and material systems that provide the genetic and physical armature where processes of carbon sequestration and oxygen production can be intensified by the planting of DNA fragments of selected microbes.
For OFFPOLINN, the Transspecies Palace affirms how human life and social relationships expand beyond bodies, in an alliance with more-than-human life. Life and societal interaction are distributed and transscalar enactments, where the microbial, the bodily and the planetary co-produce each other. It also marks a transition from an architecture of carbonization, non-human sacrificability and extractivism; to one of mutual care.
