Pepeyoca: Light from Within

How can living biological systems become part of our environment?
This project seeks new models for how architects and designers can integrate living systems into architectural design. By focusing on bioluminescence, the project questions the concepts, crafts, and interactions through which bacterial luminescence can be designed, and it aims to understand how we can develop a more resilient form of co-inhabitation with the bacterial world.

The project develops a type of architecture that is both a living environment for bioluminescent bacteria and a living wall. The bioreactor creates an ecological setting in which nutrition and oxygen pass through the system, feeding the bacteria and enabling their performance, while waste and toxins become the setting for a heathered landscape. The probe asks, “How can we interact with living biological systems?” and “What are the entangled correlations between our living worlds?”