On Air, Water, and Grown Spaces
by James Schweitzer
Image provided by NYU student and mushroom cultivator, Ben Blaustein insta: @ben.blau.stein
“Humans have been making buildings for thousands and thousands of years with bricks and mortar, and steel and glass. But along with those materials, we’ve also been developing carbon fiber and plastics. And these materials have left a mark on the planet. Can we design our way out of this? If we are to survive, we must design our way out of this. It’s now on us to decide where we’re going from here.”
- Neri Oxman, Bio-Architecture
This essay is a written representation of what future buildings can be. Rather than being constructed and leaving a toxic footprint on our earth, this paper writes in detail about the future of built spaces in a way that I see it being formed. Emerging technologies allowing carbon-based, printed housing is the future we can rely on. This gives a better understanding of how our future spaces will look, how we will interact with them, and how they will mentally affect us.
Time and Location:
The year is 2143. Location: Sausalito, California.
Background:
The old city of San Francisco, just across the bridge, glances at the hillside which overlooks the late town of Old Sausalito. The town is flooded from rising sea levels, leaving every structure of the old town half-buried in the water – poking its upper floors and roofs out of the bay. The sun shines down upon them as they line the water for a mile or so across the bend which locals and tourists alike would frequent as a concrete congregation area filled with steps, squares, and benches. Looming above the old town are the hills which houses were perched on, appearing as a west-coast “Rainbow Row” out of Charleston, South Carolina. The vegetation hugging each home is lush and green. Well fed and well watered from the marine layer each morning which softens the geography and leaves it nourished and happy before the morning sun breaks through and sends it away.
Out of the homes and apartment buildings which make use of the limited space, one stands out the most while also remaining the most innocuous. There is a specific building which grows out of the 35 degree hillside, stretching upward in a square-like shape which is covered with vines and other plants growing out of the brown and barked exterior. Every floor has a series of concrete boxes which protrude from the walls, each carrying a large sheet of glass which connects the volume of the structure to the outside world. Engaging with, but not quite touching in some contexts.
The structure itself is a unique creation stemming from the fruits of human labor, genetic modification, and nature’s cooperation. This individual project stands unlike any other in modern human history because it was grown. Programming cells from a number of species of trees and modifying them to grow exponentially faster, the structure before us was grown and molded to the desired specifications. This came from the aspiration for humans to be closer to nature and carbon-based living, both mitigating the carbon crisis and forming healthy living quarters. After 30 years of continual growth and human intervention, such as ornamentation, electricals, and windows, the structure blossoms from the hillside and stretches upward, connecting its inhabitants to the ground on which they stand.
As you enter the apartment on the seventh floor in the southeast corner, you enter a dim room which has light trickling in from the living room and dining room, ahead of you and to the right side. There are additional soft glows which illuminate the ceiling and come from the staircase to the left. You enter the room and feel the hard floor below you which is polished concrete, but still reasonably warm. You take another step in and feel a soft wool carpet below your feet, which adds a layer of cosiness and a feeling of home. The air is crisp, like that of entering a forest and feeling a natural element which is often excused from a home. It lacks the moisture of the exterior, but you feel a connection to earth that you otherwise wouldn’t have in a traditional home. In that moment, you feel interconnected, but aren’t fully conscious of the feeling.
As you look to the left you see a wide staircase which extends upward with a long vertical chandelier made of a series of glass illuminating orbs, surrounded by seasonal plants and english ivy. These caress the supportive elements maintaining the structure and lightly grasping the bulbs. The staircase begins with three steps upward, leading to a square slab of wood, then a right turn which takes you up 14 steps, then wraps around – forming a wide c- shaped staircase. This is protected by a wrap around bannister which grows like a tree out of the floor at the first step, then organically wraps around as a railing up the stairs. During the warmer months, wisteria grows beneath the railing, which travels upward. When the months grow cold, the wisteria retreats and pine grows downward, leaving a nostalgic smell in the air of pine and sap.
The walls are tall, around ten feet. Each wall in the apartment symmetrically features two one-foot wide concrete columns which split the sections of wooden walls (oak which has become smooth to the touch). The ceiling reveals itself after the walls curve upward about two feet and the concrete columns on each wall recedes. The floor extends out nearly 12 feet in a square-like fashion, but with slightly curved walls. As you examine the walls flowing around the room, limited by their concrete counterparts, there is a form of ornamentalism to their design which resembles that of an early 20th century Swedish apartment. Fine details of piping flow up the wood, which have been the product of artisans chipping away at the growth. This has released a level of sap which protects the details and changes the experience when you touch it in certain areas – mostly inside the cuts and below them.
Natural light enters the space through doorways coming from the dining room and living room. Dancing across the ceiling are a set of glass tubes which flow in a Louis Sullivan-esque design, which hold bioluminescent bacteria in water, which is flows gracefully, producing a glow which calms you as your eyes dance with the light. As your eyes come down from the ceiling, you notice the doorways which reveal the following spaces and the details of them. They are three and a half feet wide and eight feet tall, and are surrounded by four inches of protruding ornamentation. The top is arched and holds a combination of cut ivy and wisteria along the sides, which trickle down around 4 feet before it cuts off. The bar at the top of the doorway is glass and illuminates a soft warm glow, inviting the user to flow throughout the spaces.
As you walk forward deeper into the foyer, then turn left at the center of the room, you walk towards the doorway to the dining room. As you approach the room, you come closer to the room’s divide where the table cuts off and the walking section to a wrap around seated space, clad in chestnut leather on the right hand side of the room.
You cross the thresh as the french doors open into the dining room and stop approximately three inches from the wall. You immediately are faced with an expansive window before you which has a rough concrete outline to it. The window is a static sheet of glass which rises nine feet wide and nine feet tall, overlooking the greenery of the hillside and peering over the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The light shines into the room, bathing it with warmth and character, bouncing off the reflective floors and onto the oak walls. As a large gust of wind sweeps from the bay onto the building, you feel a certain sway, acknowledging the structure is one with the Earth, and makes no promises to humanity, despite its warmth and our perceived control over its design.
The table towards the left half of the room is an antique mahogany square splaying four feet wide and nine and a half feet long, with arm chairs seated one at each end and three on each side. The ceiling is of the same structure and design as the foyer, however it features nearly half the glowing tubes, so it remains a darker wood color - gradient from the moment the pale blue walls transition to the ceiling with a slight curve until it reaches the center. It stands so because of a programmed chlorophyll which takes the place of paint and “naturally” dyes the wood to ensure a longer stain which repairs itself from the damage of the sunlight that shines through.
As you approach the kitchen from the dining room table, you cross through a doorway which is identical to that of the rest of the apartment. The doorway features french pocket doors, which are made of two pieces of mahogany which are lightly lacquered and feature a traditional carving design which resembles that of an early 1900s apartment building in London. The doors slide into the wall, which reveals an open space which is flooded appropriately with light.
The room is a square, however interrupted by a large square concrete and glass window which is identical to the one in the living room, peering out from the corner walls overlooking the water and land at a 45 degree angle. The floors reflect light well as they are lightly stained wide-plank oak. The room is a kitchen with a wrap around counter which is a dark concrete supported by a system of reflective shelving and pipes. The bare look makes the kitchen appear rather spartan but also elegant in design, purposefully so. The center island breaks tradition with its slab of white onyx stone as the surface, about one and a half inches in thickness, splaying 6 feet wide and 3 feet deep. As you walk through the room, you are enclosed by subway tile which move from the walls to the ceiling. The tiles gradually shift from white to a light seafoam green, then meet at the center of the ceiling with a circular orb providing a warm glow. The orb extends four legs down the ceiling and the walls which also provide light going upward throughout the room, illuminating the space in an even tone. Towards the back of the quarter are a set of cabinets which act as pantries. Before you reach the pantries, you have a more casual dining table, a Hay triangle leg table with six black Eames dowel chairs circling it, eager to eat but also unsure of their fate from the level of sanitation in their surroundings.
Between the two sets of pantries in the back of the room sets a doorway like the others in the apartment, spanning three and a half feet wide by eight feet tall. Through the doors you see a long room ahead, blue in color with a white floor which is slightly matted, stretching beneath a red oriental rug, reflecting a bit of its glow throughout the room.
You walk through a four feet long pantry which is fully encased in dark navy lacquer, feeling cold and smelling of stone. Your feet grow cold as you walk across the stone tile surrounded by a dark canopy of slick wood, encasing your experience in darkness before you escape toward the light emerging from the living room.
As you walk through the doorway entering the living room from the pantry and the kitchen, the tall french doors open toward the living room and stop three inches from each wall. You enter the first of two living spaces situated on the long red carpet spanning nearly the length of the room. The space is wide, roughly 12 feet in width by what would appear to be 25 feet long. There are sectional sofas, square and plush lining two of the four corners of the living spaces. There are Eames dowel chairs scattered throughout the room and Hans Wegner round chairs placed next to each of the sectionals. The two spaces each have a large window clad in glass and concrete peering out from the room onto the hillside. The windows give the appearance of dividing the room socially, but not physically. You glance upward to a ceiling design similar to that of the foyer, which encourages a type of continuity which helps pull the room together as one, besides the fireplace which stands between the two windows and social spaces.
The fireplace is around five feet wide and three and a half feet tall. The fireplace is reclaimed from another building back on the East Coast from the late 1800s. It stands strong in the middle of the room, set in limestone and carved by hand from some men back in their day, then restored twice over. Once in 2016, then once more just before it was installed in its new home. On the ground is brick and mortar which extends two feet beyond the start of the mantle for extra protection. The bricks are newer than the fireplace and have some wear on them, but have a pink-ish quality to them. To the left is a set of large pocket doors, which span six feet wide and lead to the back of the foyer. They are directly centered on the wall, with book cases which sink into the walls about one foot.
The room is light and airy, especially when compared to that of the pantry which leads into it. The smells are fresh, but somewhat dry compared to the rest of the apartment. The tall walls which are a pale beige in color combined with the wool carpet give the smell of a winter’s night comforted by the warmth of a wood fireplace while sitting on a carpet in front of it, letting the heat radiate on your face and the soft, yet slightly itchy feeling take you back.
As you look up again, you notice the ceiling is flatter compared to the rest of the home. There are semi-translucent glass tubes which hold bioluminescent bacteria pushed throughout the ceiling structure in the apartment building, glowing at night. The light travels from one room to the next, bringing a cohesive relationship to the rhizomatic design of the spaces.
Upon exiting the living room, you return to the foyer which has been flipped. The long staircase extends outward from your right and the door entering the entire space is nearly in front of you. You return back to the beginning of your journey, acknowledging you have walked almost in a circle traveling around the living space. Through that you have entered the most technological living space you've been to but also feeling completely at home as if you never left the outer world. The hills below you will still stand tall and the soil beneath your feet hasn't been corrupted by the toxicity of concrete and PVC seeping into the ground and disturbing the biology of the state.
Rhizomatic Nature:
This apartment’s design is largely connected by a Rhizomatic theory less so in design, but more so in the nature of its materiality. The structure’s material nature comprised of altered carbon, stretching and reaching its limbs from its roots to the rooftop form a complex structure which can be altered at any time. If a room is taken away, the grown nature will correct its loss and form a new path for expansion if necessary.
As for the direction of the rooms taking form in the shape of an apartment, if you take any of the rooms away, it will always exist as a functioning apartment which can host the needs of a living space, but it will always feel different. The structure will adapt, but the overall feeling of the space will be different.
The aspect of the space which represents its Rhizomatic quality best is the ceiling structure which sprawls across the whole apartment. As it begins with the foyer, the bioluminescent bacteria travels through the dining, kitchen, and living room, then leaving in the chandelier which allows the water flow to continue back to its beginnings. Water moves through the spaces as needed, cutting off rooms as seen fit or filtering in a complete circle which gives the rhizome a feeling of wholeness, but not necessarily a restrictive feeling.
As you interact with the building more, you begin to understand the inspiration behind the design. The purpose of this building was to house its inhabitants while bringing them closer to nature in a modern way. Rather than building a falsely greenwashed structure with large expansive views from hefty imported glass panes, held together by large moulds of carbon-hefty concrete, featuring the occasional bio-wall, the minds behind this project aimed to bring nature to the inhabitant in every way they could.
The structure is grown. It starts in the soil, then grows towards the sky, purposely leaving space for mechanical intervention, pouring concrete, inserting electronics, and working alongside the framework of the grown structure. Acknowledging touch is vital to the user-experience in architecture. The shapes feel natural and soft when you caress them. Walking on surfaces feels natural and light. The structure gives in a way that makes you feel safe and connected, but aware of your place in the world. And the smells are natural, letting you feel a sense of nostalgia from different seasonal experiences.
Walking through a garden growing up and smelling the flowers. Feeling the wood in a workshop as you build a chair. Laying before a fireplace in the dead of winter on a wool carpet, smelling its age and feeling the comfort which it brings. All these seasonal experiences which procure a sense of nostalgia are encapsulated in the elements of this building, whether they were grown or curated in the design process. These are the feelings and memories you have when walking through this space, each pulling from memories which are personal to the user – with the intended purpose to elicit a human response from a natural setting.
As we venture into the anthropocene, scientists are looking to biological solutions for our man-made problems. This can be applied for increasing bacterial and microbial biodiversity within soils, sequestering carbon, growing habitable spaces, and shifting away from plastic consumption. Of the many who venture into these fields, Neri Oxman and Carole Collete come to mind for their work in forming sustainable futures.
Specifically, Colette’s work titled “Biolace” is a theoretical (yet doable) lacing of plant root systems to form textiles, produce food, and reimagine the ways for which we can use plants in our everyday lives. Taken to a larger scale, Colette’s work can venture into the direction of growing habitable spaces and buildings. This essay is a written representation of what future buildings can be. Rather than being constructed and leaving a toxic footprint on our earth. Emerging technologies allowing carbon-based, printed and grown housing is the future we can rely on. This gives a better understanding of how our future spaces can look, how we can interact with them, and how they will mentally affect us.
______________________________________________________________________________
On a 35 degree hillside, a structure stretches upward in a square-like shape, clad in vines and vegetation upon a barked exterior. Every floor features a series of concrete boxes which protrude from the walls, each carrying a large sheet of glass which connects the volume of the structure to the outside world. Engaging with, but not quite touching in some contexts.
As you climb to the seventh floor in the southeast corner, you enter a dim foyer which has light trickling in from the living room and dining room, ahead of you and to the right side. There are additional soft glows which illuminate the ceiling and come from the staircase to the left. You enter the room and feel the hard floor below you which is polished concrete, but still reasonably warm. You take another step in and feel a soft wool carpet below your feet, which emanates a nostalgic feeling through its smell and feel. The air is crisp, like that of entering a forest, an element which is often excused from built spaces. It lacks the moisture of the exterior, but still leaves a subconscious feeling of the space’s interconnectedness, drawing you in.
As you look to the left, there is a wide staircase which extends upward around a long vertical chandelier made of glass illuminating orbs, surrounded by seasonal plants and english ivy. These caress the structural elements and lightly grasp the bulbs. The staircase begins with three steps upward, leading to a square slab of wood, then a right turn which takes you up 14 steps, then wraps around – forming a wide c-shaped staircase. This is protected by a wraparound bannister which grows like a tree from the floor, then organically flows up as the railing. During the warmer months, wisteria drops beneath the railing, traveling upward. When the months grow cold, the wisteria retreats and pine grows downward, leaving the festive smell of pine and sap.
The walls grow tall, around ten feet in height. Each wall in the apartment symmetrically features two one-foot wide concrete columns which split the sections of wooden walls (oak which has become smooth to the touch). The ceiling reveals itself after the walls curve upward about two feet and the concrete columns on each wall recedes. The floor extends out nearly 12 feet in a square-like fashion, but with slightly curved walls. As you examine the walls flowing around the room, limited by their concrete counterparts, there is a form of ornamentalism to their design which resembles that of an early 20th century Swedish apartment. Fine details of piping flow up the wood, which have been the product of artisans chipping away at the growth. This has released a level of sap which protects the details and changes the experience when you touch it in certain areas – mostly inside the cuts and below them.
Natural light enters the space through doorways coming from the dining room and living room. Dancing across the ceiling are a set of glass tubes which flow in a Louis Sullivan-esque design, which flows bioluminescent bacteria in water, producing a glow which calms you as your eyes dance with the light. As your eyes come down from the ceiling, you notice the doorways which reveal the following spaces and the details of them. They are three and a half feet wide and eight feet tall; are surrounded by four inches of protruding ornamentation. The top is arched and holds a combination of ivy and wisteria along the sides, which trickle down around 4 feet before it is cut. The bar at the top of the doorway is glass and illuminates a soft warm glow, inviting the user to flow throughout the spaces.
Bibliography:
1) Pallasmaa, J. (2011). An Architecture of Seven Senses, Toward a New Interior edited by Weinthal L., 40-49, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
2) TOBE, DR RENEE. Film, Architecture and Spatial Imagination. ROUTLEDGE, 2018.
3) Kleine, Holger. The Drama of Space : Spatial Sequences and Compositions in Architecture, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.acti on?docID=5156752.
4) Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. New York :Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
5) “Neri Oxman: Bio-Architecture .” Performance by Neri Oxman, Abstract: The Art of Design, Netflix, 25 Sept. 2019, www.netflix.com/watch/80237094?trackId=14170289&tctx=0%2C1%2Cc25e0a0b-0ab4 -4dc6-8139-ae5903057f5f-766786%2C71e21698-b93c-43b7-a9c5-3be998a6d366_56271 237X3XX1575994809868%2C71e21698-b93c-43b7-a9c5-3be998a6d366_ROOT.