The Canada Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, hosted Picoplanktonics. A research that emerged as a radical rethinking of how architecture can become a platform that blends biology, computation, and fabrication to propose an alternative future, one where buildings don't just minimize harm, but actively participate in planetary repair. At its core lies a humble organism: marine cyanobacteria, capable of both capturing carbon and contributing to the material growth of the structure it inhabits. The project has been developed over 5 years by a group of researchers at ETH Zurich, led by Andrea Shin Ling and a group of interdisciplinary contributors and collaborators. Together, they formed the Living Room Collective, founded a year ago to build upon this work and showcase it at the Venice Biennale. The Core team members include Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui, and Clayton Lee. This conversation with the team behind the project shares the philosophy, technical challenges, and speculative horizons that animated their work from printing living sand lattices to maintaining microbial life in a public exhibition. Their aim is to inspire people to reconsider architecture not as a static object, but as a living, evolving process. One that requires care, patience, and a radical shift in mindset.
ArchDaily (Moises Carrasco): What inspired the creation of Picoplanktonics, and how do you see this platform being integrated into conventional architectural practice? Could it serve as a complement or even replacement to current building systems?
Living Room Collective (Andrea Shin Ling): We started with this research around 5 years ago at ETH Zurich, so it hasn't been a single point of inspiration but rather the slow development of a platform that could fabricate a living structure at a scale that reflects the remarkable potential that natural systems have. We understand the negative impact the construction industry has on global carbon emissions, so we wanted to understand strategies to shift this. We were examining organisms capable of mitigating carbon emissions, like the marine cyanobacteria we use in Picoplanktonics, that are able to draw down CO2 while at the same time slowly hardening the structure they live in through photosynthesis and biocementation processes.
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Canada Pavilion Presents Picoplanktonics, a Living Experiment in Regenerative Architecture at the 2025 Venice BiennaleWhile the research is still far from full integration into conventional architecture practice and construction, and the material is not a structural replacement, a current impulse is that the cyanobacteria could eventually be integrated into urban facades, so that our existing building stock could be adapted to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
AD: Could you explain the material composition of the printed structures and how long they are expected to remain functional, as well as what kind of maintenance or care they require over time?
LRC: The bioprints are made of sand, a biocompatible binder (glue), and living cyanobacteria. The cyanobacteria are capable of long-term carbon sequestration via photosynthesis and biocementation, where CO2 can be stored permanently in the form of minerals. Functional in this case could mean different things - for the biological carbon sequestration function, they remain functional as long as the cyanobacteria population is alive, healthy, and has access to the salts and moisture that are needed for biomineralization. In terms of architectural functionality - this is the part of the question we are asking - as the structures grow in some areas and decay in others, is this still considered functional? Or if the part is biologically inert but intact, is that considered functional? It's something we have to decide as designers of a living and dying structure.
Living structures require care. The marine cyanobacteria we've used for Picoplanktonics require sunlight, warmth, and salt water to sequester carbon dioxide, and the bioprints they live in need to be monitored constantly. While we explored automating this process, we intentionally wanted to demonstrate the amount of effort needed to maintain these structures, to show the amount of trouble we need to go through in order to integrate living materials into our spaces. Co-operating with nature, for us, demands a paradigm shift in how we relate to our built environment. We need to abandon our notions of architecture as making things easier, faster, and cheaper for humans and instead prioritise ecological resilience that is rooted in stewardship and care.
AD: How is the cyanobacteria harvested and introduced into the structures, and what is the biological process behind its function as a carbon sink and oxygen producer?
LRC: The species of cyanobacteria we use is a common marine species that can be cultured in the lab. Then we combine the bacteria with the glue; it is integrated into the sand structures during the 3D printing process. We then wait for the cyanobacteria to grow throughout the structures - as they grow, the prints become greener. Carbon is sequestered via 2 ways in the sand lattices: through photosynthesis (CO2 is consumed, O2 and biomass are produced) and through biocementation, which in this case takes atmospheric CO2 and turns it into carbonate minerals. It is this process that is of interest to a lot of researchers in the field, because this mineral form of carbon storage is potentially permanent, and it happens under 'normal' or mild environmental conditions.
AD: This project brings together biology, robotics, and architecture. What have been the biggest lessons or surprises in working across such diverse disciplines?
LRC: One of the biggest lessons that came from the project was how do we as architects reconcile our design expectations with a material that lives and dies, and thus changes, and whose curing or hardening time is extremely slow? As architects and computational designers, we are used to standardization and industrial levels of predictability and efficiency in our materials, so what happens when we work with a system that doesn't always support that? Or has a degree of autonomy? Can we design in ways to accommodate this, or can we change our expectations to accept things that in an industrial system would be considered a defect?
AD: What are the main limitations you've encountered when trying to scale the printing process from lab-scale prototypes to architectural-sized structures?
LRC: In many ways, this research is still in its infancy, which means that time has been the greatest constraint on this project. This entire exhibition is a functional, living experiment, where the scale-up of this biofabrication platform was happening alongside the creation of Picoplanktonics and the structures within. While we refined our methods throughout the fabrication and installation process - and even now as the exhibition is open - we're always learning more about these materials and how they function within real-world contexts. The idea is to allow the exhibition to inform future research as we continue to imagine how this biofabrication platform can be utilized in potential real-world settings.
AD: Since moving the structures from the lab to the Canada Pavilion, what challenges have you encountered? How do you see the system evolving or improving based on this real-world deployment?
LRC: By moving the structures into the Canada Pavilion, we are introducing an infinite number of variables and losing a large degree of control. This ranges from fluctuations in temperature and humidity to the hundreds of visitors on any given day and the individual biomes they bring into the space. All of this informs the health of the structures, and we're working, in collaboration with the on-site team, to adapt our strategies for stewardship through the exhibition period, to understand what is most effective. This will give us an enormous amount of information in terms of fueling future research and potential improvements for things like structural stability or more robust bacterial growth.
AD: How do you envision the role of Picoplanktonics in future human habitats such as lunar colonies, underground cities, or space travel?
LRC: One thing to note is that this Picoplanktonics is designed for this site in Venice, where warm sun, salt water, and high levels of humidity are abundant. For these other situations, this use case might not be appropriate, although perhaps another use case might work. Another thing to note is that beyond the science that's underlining this entire project, we're ultimately interested in shifting the way we relate to the natural world. How can we, as humans, co-operate with nature to create spaces that remediate the planet rather than exploit it? The question, as it relates to lunar colonies, underground cities, and space travel, is whether or not these proposals are perpetuating systems that centre human priorities above all else. And if they do, at the expense of the only planet we have that is currently habitable, should we be pursuing them?
We invite you to check out ArchDaily's comprehensive coverage of the 2025 Venice Biennale.
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