BIO BOT

Anastasiya Katliarskaya (MSc),

Ziyue Gao (MSc)

Anna Maria Oldakowski (MArch)

Manya Singhal (MArch)

2021– 2022

"An increasingly homogeneous biosphere, with silent forests, empty seas, a world with less diversity of sound, layers, textures, living colours, and perceptible differences, could be the landscape of the future."

The fragmentation of the natural landscape, pollution caused by anthropogenic activity and over-exploitation of resources have accelerated the degradation of precariously balanced ecosystems. Society is at the technosphere's precipice, disassociating from the ecological plight in the biosphere. Catapulting towards energy crises, thermal dysregulation, historically high carbon emissions and species endangerment, the purpose of the project is to create a new green network as a mitigating solution that links existing green tissue and reconnects back to London's Green Belt. This reinvigoration's contribution to climate change resilience employs self-sustainable energy generation as architectural developments operating within the threshold of interstitial spaces to fortify underutilised spaces into augmented public spaces. Composed of spatially adaptive "bio-bot" modules or ecological machine hybrids, they can be implemented in different site contexts, thresholds and environmental scenarios; foretelling necessary participatory intervention in urban nodes of environmental deterioration. These architectural interventions focus on the thresholds between biofuel and energy production to tie back into existing power infrastructure, filtration of airborne pollutants alongside harvesting and purification of rain and grey water. Moreover, simultaneously cultivating and protecting flora connectivity for synanthropic species habitation. In this scenario, technology becomes the reparative system to define new psycho-ecological engagements between human participants, non-human species, local environmental conditions and their projections across temporal time frames. The real-time monitoring of data will allow for variability within the formal organisations of the eco-machines to become new adaptive ecologies rather than infill strategies in situ. The architectural feedback cycle within this intervention raises ethical responsibility in the manufacturing, production and participatory care-taking of the bio-bots throughout the time frame of their environmental arbitration and material life cycle.