Venice is suffering from many major issues that include population displacement, escalating living costs, and a dwindling availability of affordable local housing. This is directly a result of the influx between the permanent residents of Venice and the seasonal tourism, and how this is affecting the struggle “to acquire valuable resources of space and commodities”. In this example the use of slime mold as a self-sustaining organism is applied to the urban fabric of Venice. Due to this flooding of tourism and the tides, the project utilizes the rooftops to create links between Venice’s isolated communities. The adaptive lifestyle of slime mold changes based on available resources, and can be applied to the similar in Venice, however the result would hopefully be “fruiting bodies emerge to ensure the reproduction of the next generation.” From there the project attempts to create a prefabricated system that replicates the membranes of the slime mold, leaving Venice with a easily changing self sustaining system that could possibly pull them out of there current adversity. I would like to take this concept and explore how it can be utilized in other cities. Could this be a start to the idea of how the scientific aspects of nature can be incorporated to create a system that still maintains the essence of what architecture is and can do (link people and communities).
— Stefan Castellucci
RESEARCH RESOURCES
Gissen, David. A More Monumental, Non-Naturalistic Environment. 51-53
Lima, Antonietta Iolanda. Soleri: architecture as human ecology. New York, N.Y.: Monacelli Press, 2003
Ruy, David. Randomness and Irreducible Complexity. Tarp Architecture Manual 10, “Coding Parameters”
“Biomimicry 3.8.” Biomimicry 3.8. http://biomimicry.net (accessed September 15, 2013).
