SPOTLIGHT: NEW BOOK by MITCHELL JOACHIM, "Super Cells: Building with Biology"

Mitchell Joachim is a leader in ecological design, architecture and urbanism.  He is a founding Co-President of Terreform ONE in 2006.  He earned a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch. Columbia University.  Mitchell is an Associate Professor at NYU and EGS (European Graduate School).  He previously taught at Columbia University, Syracuse University, Parsons, Washington University, and the Frank Gehry Chair at University of Toronto. He was formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, and Pei Cobb Freed. He has been awarded fellowships at TED 2010, Moshe Safdie Assoc., and Martin Society for Sustainability at MIT. He won the Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanityy, the History Channel and Infiniti Excellence Award for City of the Future, Time Magazine Best Invention of 2007, Compacted Car w/ MIT Smart Cities and a Bronze Medal at iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) for Gen2Seat.  His project, Fab Tree Hab, has been exhibited at MoMA and widely published.  He was chosen by Wired magazine for "The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To".  Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell in "The 100 People Who Are Changing America".  In 2009 he was interviewed on the Colbert Report. Popular Science magazine has featured his work as a visionary for “The Future of the Environment” in 2010.  Mitchell was the Winner of the Victor Papanek Social Design Award sponsored by the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austrian Cultural Forum, and Museum of Arts and Design in 2011.  Dwell magazine featured Mitchell as one of "The NOW 99" in 2012.

 

"Super Cells: Building with Biology" (TED Books) gives an "eye-popping tour of the new biological frontier, Nina Tandon and Mitchell Joachim describe the tantalizing array of inventions already being created with nature’s elemental building block: the cell. Imagine personalized bone replacements, living condominium complexes, bacteria-made haute couture, and top sirloin grown without a farm. Tandon and Joachim, daring inventors in their own right, contend that we’re entering a new technological era, one in which we can create smarter technologies by making cells our partners in design. And they confront the thorny questions that come with playing with the power of life."

 



Mitchell Joachim is a founding member of Global Design NYU, and is one of the innovative designers featured in our forthcoming BOOK!

Stay up-to-date on international news regarding sustainable architecture!

Visit gdnyu.com, like Global Design NYU on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@gdnyu).

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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICXN3VA/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_g5n.sb0S6WD3Z
http://www.mitchelljoachim.com/

Gallatin Faculty Show | Come see Louise Harpman and Mitchell Joachim of Global Design NYU!

Gallatin Faculty Show

Dec 5, 2013 -Jan 16, 2014 | 5:00 PM-9:00 PM

Location: Gallatin School of Individualized Study
1 Washington Place | New York, NY 10003

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Contributors include:

Jaime Arrendondo
C. Daniel Dawson
Jeff Day
Martha Diaz
Matthew A.J. Gregory
Louise Harpman
Lanny Harrison
Mitchell Joachim
Nina Katchadourian
Bert Katz
Keith Miller
Meleko Mokgosi
Laurin Raiken
Mark Read
Barnaby Ruhe
Antonio Rutigliano
Salvadore Tagliarino
Greg Wyatt

http://gallatin.nyu.edu/utilities/events/2013/12/facultyshow.html
http://gallatin.nyu.edu/utilities/events.html

World Map Installation uses E. Coli and Jellyfish Proteins to illuminate our population in 2100

By Johnny Magdaleno — Oct 22 2013




A Buckminster Fuller-style Dymaxion Map

Terreform’s Bio City Map in full, one side
If you think about it, Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map is a perfect example of how reductive approaches to science may be necessary to resolve some of the world’s more pressing complications. To best understand the Earth as a total entity, Fuller suggested we go pre-Magellan, back to the days when the earth’s shape was physically unproven, by unravelling our beloved sphere to a flat, non-symmetrical surface. Like peeling an orange while keeping the peel intact.

Close up of Dymaxion Map
This is why it fits so well as a model for Terreform’s Bio City Lab – in ethos and in structure. Putting Fuller’s concept to practice, the New York-based design firm constructed a vertical plane of two-sided triangular pieces that model Earth’s surface, as if it were peeled directly off the mantle. Each side of the installation houses physical representations of data that snapshot a coming reality: by 2100, an anticipated 11 billion human bodies will be hustlin’ in all corners of the globe.

Instead of relying solely on computer algorithms or census trends, Terreform employs what it refers to as “bacteriography” to drive Bio City Lab’s glowing body. Strains of E. Coli and protein structures from sea anemones and jellyfish combine to bio-illuminate population fluctuations from now until 2100, ultimately mimicking the natural ebb-and-flow of urban densities with purely biological means.
Terreform’s website details why: “Bacteria in this constrained form and under the right conditions, behave almost identically to urban population patterns […] In many cases, they are as good as computational versions because they are the source which algorithms are derived from. In time, the mapping installation may illustrate patterns yet unobserved in typical digital models.”

The protein structures are injected into the DNA of genetically modified E. Coli strains, which are then gathered in petri dishes and subjected to UV rays. These rays effectively flip a switch in the bacteria, resulting in a neon mesh of blues, greens, reds and yellows. Green glowing blotches indicate where we are now; red ones indicate what our numbers will look like in the coming century.

Opposite the petri dishes are mountainous 3D graphs detailing population peaks across 2100’s world.

As a result, the structure becomes both static and mutative: the rigid and plastic population graphs depict future projections, while the ongoing biological reactions depict the fluid, amorphous quality of population changes.
It also takes into account contemporary phenomena like megacities (urban areas with populations of more than 10 million) and instant cities (urban areas with an infrastructure erected in anticipation of a population, usually at the cusp of economic booms).

But instead of specifying which petri dishes or 3D graphs correlate with which cities, the Bio City Map is geographically indiscriminate. Current urban areas, countries, continents or even bodies of water remain unreferenced, so that the populationstatistics and data of each city come together to form a single, transcontinental urbanity. In turn, it becomes a city of cities.
Through this, the installation suggests that if we’re to tackle problems of saturated population density and their potential corollaries (water, energy, food, housing, etc. crises), we need to stop worrying about national or regional interest and look at the bigger global picture. Literally.

Bio City Map for Terreform’s Biological Urbanism at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada

Detail of population spike graph Terreform is an international contender when it comes to these things.
They’re one in a series of contemporary design firms looking to explore the romantic tendencies of futurism through experimental approaches to society building. Along with recent curations like Liam Young’s Future Perfect exhibition at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (which we partially covered here) and the writings of William Meyers, they’re giving breath to the argument that creativity, technology, and biology must unite if we’re to effectively solve societal dilemmas down the road.
Each of these groups and creators recognize the need for cross-collaboration. It’s no longer just architects, just urbanists, or just engineers hashing out blueprints – it’s all of the above, plus a cadre of fiction authors, artists, futurists, mathematicians, and more. Which makes more than enough sense: how can you guide the growth of a society without soliciting the thoughts of those who grow its culture?
All photos courtesy of Terreform


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Magdaleno, Johnny. "World Map Installation Uses E. Coli and Jellyfish Proteins to Illuminate Our Population in 2100." The Creators Project. The Creators Project, 22 Oct. 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/world-map-installation-uses-e-coli-and-jellyfish-proteins-to-illuminate-our-population-in-2100

Louise Harpman & Mitchell Joachim on the Future of Ecological Cities: Thursday, Sept. 26th at 12:30-1:30pm | 285 Mercer St. 10th Floor.

ABSTRACT

Global warming effects pose new challenges to the architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design communities. The immediate response has been a turn toward a host of energy-saving technologies. What has rarely been addressed, however, is the problem of scale. How can designers make sure that global solutions do not come at the expense of local traditions, cultures, and environments? By placing human rational, emotional, technological, and social needs at the center of our environmental concerns, this seminar proposes a new global design initiative for the future of our cities. The aim is to develop a language of design that can create proximity between individual responsibility and the current global environmental crisis. The featured projects showcase leading-edge innovations at multiple scales.

Mitchell Joachim and Louise Harpman will present various ways in which their designs reformat the unfortunate separation between humans and the natural world, followed by a discussion led by Peder Anker.

Global Design NYU is the research and design laboratory founded by Peder Anker, Louise Harpman, and Mitchell Joachim.  Their forthcoming book, Global Design (to be published in the spring of 2014) is based on the Global Design New York University GDNYU exhibitions and symposia hosted in New York (2011) and London (2012).

BIOGRAPHIES
MITCHELL JOACHIM is a Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor in Practice at NYU. He was formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, and Pei Cobb Freed. He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Moshe Safdie and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT. He was chosen by Wired magazine for "The Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To". Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell in "The 100 People Who Are Changing America". Mitchell won many awards including; AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities Car. Dwell magazine featured him as "The NOW 99" in 2012. He earned a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch. Columbia University.

LOUISE HARPMAN is a founding partner at Specht Harpman | Architecture, a multi-disciplinary architecture, urban design, and design research firm in New York City. The firm has received five Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects and is included in the “Emerging Voices” program sponsored by the Architectural League of New York. Specht Harpman’s solar-powered, off-the-grid modular house, zeroHouse, has won a number of design awards and has been published in over 45 international books and magazines. Harpman is Associate Professor of Practice in the areas of Architectural Design, Urban Design and Sustainability at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She also holds Associate Faculty positions at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and in Environmental Studies. Harpman is a graduate of Harvard (A.B in East Asian Studies), Cambridge (M.Phil. in Social Anthropology) and Yale (M.Arch in Architecture). She is an Associate of the American Institute of Architects, a Senior Fellow of the Design Trust for Public Space, Inc., a member of the Architectural League of New York, the Municipal Art Society, and the New York Academy of Sciences.

 

To learn more about the NYU Environmental Studies Department please visit:

http://environment.as.nyu.edu/page/newevents

 

 

"NYU Environmental Studies Program Events." NYU Environmental Studies Program. New York University, Arts and Sciences, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2013.

 

 

 

Let's Talk about Design!

NYU leaders and professors welcome GDNYU London 2012 participants and attendees

Gary Slapper, head of NYU in London, welcome talk

Lisa Goldfarb, Associate Dean of NYU Gallatin, welcome talk 

Louise Harpman

Mitchell Joachim

Peder Anker

View more photos from the event here!

A Designer's Manhattan

Here's a clip of what an island becomes when it meets abstraction, play, and a big dose of imagination:

To see this and many other breathtaking projects, come to GDNYU's Elsewhere Envisioned, a speaker series and exhibition bringing together leading designers, educators, and innovators.

Exhibition & Symposium May 25, 2011 - June 25, 2011
Register FREE here.

NYU Gallatin Labowitz Main Gallery,
One Washington Place
New York, NY 10003

Music by DJ Spooky, "Heliocentric." DJ Spooky will be performing live at the GDNYU show opening, MAY 25, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Lately...

Here's what some of the GD NYU faculty has been up to this week:

Louise Harpman: Cole residence concept renderings

TED 2011

Our very own Mitchell Joachim, a TED Senior Fellow, attended the TED 2011 event in Long Beach, CA last week. His work at Terreform ONE, and Planetary ONE, such as Urbaneering Brooklyn below, was featured on the stage during the conferences.