S6E3 - Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley on Biotic Architecture

Architecture has long treated bacteria as an enemy to be controlled—dangerous foreign agents to be sealed out, sterilized, or erased. In their new book, We the Bacteria: Notes Toward a Biotic Architecture, architecture historians and curators Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley turn that assumption inside out (literally,) arguing that architecture should not be bent on shielding and isolating humans from their invisible partners through hygiene protocols, ventilation, materials, light, and other forms of management and control. Buildings should instead be shaped by microbes as they have been for centuries, and humans should reconsider their role as participants in a much...