I Love Extremophiles
/StoreFrontLab presents I Love Extremophiles by New York-based experimental landscape studio, GRNASFCK. Get back to basics with extremophile bacteria, nature's original metabolic organisms, and now the de-facto stewards of the post-industrial landscape. GRNASFCK transforms the gallery into a laboratory and a conference center to illuminate the forms and habitats of these little-known urban citizens, and examine diversity and hyper-resiliancy at the microscale.
“In the future, the Ego becomes the Eco, as our cultural and survival practices become fused with biology and technology. We look to the strategies of ancient life as a method of adaptation to the Anthropocene Epoch.
Extremophiles are nature’s original metabolic organisms, flourishing in extreme conditions, utilizing unusual sources of energy including ammonia, metal ions, petrochemicals, and hydrogen gas. Extremophiles are currently being domesticated for resource extraction by the mining and gas industries. Meanwhile, within the urban environment, they remain feral and unstudied, colonizing post-industrial and contaminated sites, slowly but surely metabolizing petrochemicals and other introduced toxins.
Understood as such, extremophile microorganisms can be seen as stewards and change-agents within the industrial landscape; as well as a model for considering hyper-adaptability and site-specificity as compatible design tools within an ecologically destabilized future.
How does one thrive in a wasteland?”
As part of GRNASFCK's three-day installation, the Summit on Invisible Urbanism brought together interdisciplinary thinkers to speculate on the biological, virtual, and moral tools at our deploy in confronting the post-industrial landscape, and designing for resiliency in an ecologically destabilized future. Many thanks to the panelists:
• David Fletcher, Landscape Architect, Fletcher Studio
• Andrew Cal, Molecular Genetics + Cell Biology, Mango Materials
• Nicholas Korrody, Artist, Theorist + Writer, Archinect
• Geneva Travis, Management Consultant, Water Division of ARCADIS
• Murphy Stein, R&D, Google; Futurist