E-Coli rendering based on scanning electron microscopic (SEM) imagery, Alissa Eckert for CDC, public domain
Exhibition
We the Bacteria Notes Toward Biotic Architecture
Until November 9 2025
To think about inequalities is ultimately to think about health—wellbeing in its broadest sense. Today, health is increasingly understood in terms of the microbiome: the trillions of microbes that inhabit us, feed us, maintain us, and defend us. Many contemporary diseases—obesity, diabetes, cancers, autoimmune disorders, allergies, autism, Alzheimer’s, depression—are now linked to a loss of microbial diversity. Architecture is implicated. These “diseases of the built environment” are inseparable from planetary health and the state of the biosphere. Inequalities must be considered beyond the human, which also means seeing the human differently—as a mobile ecosystem embedded in a microbial world. We the Bacteria operates as both a mirror and a projector. It introduces visitors to their microbial condition, then traces microbes from deep Earth to outer space and from 4.2 billion years ago to today. Recent research by scientists and architects is presented alongside an alternative history of architecture told from the perspective of microbes, culminating in the dysbiosis of the present. The final section looks to the future, presenting working installations by nine international design teams collaborating with microbiologists on new ways of living with microbes.
Credits
The project is part of the 24th International Exhibition Inequalities.
Curated by: Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley
Curatorial assistance: Guillermo S. Arsuaga
Research assistance: Foivos Geralis, Alessandro Pasero, Sergio Perdiguer Torralba
Exhibition design: GRACE
Graphic works: Hubertus-Design with Fabio Furlani
Special project of: Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Frank Willens
Site-specific installations: Rachel Armstrong, Hayley Eber and Lydia Kallipoliti, ecoLogic Studio, Footprint Project and Wang Lab, Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation, MAEID – Büro für Architektur & transmediale Kunst (Daniela Mittelberger and Tiziano Derme), Philippe Rahm architectes, Orkan Telhan + elii [oficina de arquitectura], PauloTavares/AUTONOMA with Terraformae
New Commissions: Jocelyn Beausire, Tal Danino with Julia Rae Kirby and Charlize Sze, Laura Kurgan with Dan Miller and Adam Vosburgh, Davide Rapp
Works by: Alex Bentley and Simon Carrington; Hans Busstra and Gael McGill; Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter; Massimo Galli and Riccardo Nodari; Carter Horton; Ivan Lopez Munera; Martin Oeggerli; Alan Sonfist; Sarah Schneck and Steven Lawrence; Tasha Sturm
International participations