Metabolic Home. New Forms of Cohabitation and Decarbonization in the Dense City

*19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale de Venezia.

The Metabolic Home presents an archetypal program for habitation, conceived as a living stage set where humans and other species—along with their physiology of ingestion, occupation, and excretion—become combustion devices and integral components of cohabitation. 

The installation is a 1:5 scale model of a home featuring ten domestic spaces—kitchen, toilet, lounge, bedroom, laundry, storage, garage, garden, balcony, and light well—each revealing how metabolic processes interwine with daily domestic activities. Every part of the home is interconnected, transforming “waste” from one space into a resource for another. For example, kitchen greywater and organic waste nourish hydroponic food production in the garden, while, AI regulates the laundry’s microclimate, channelling moist and cool air through the light shaft, which also serves as a site for domestic mycelium cultivation. 

Household objects are produced from the outputs of human and other living species, linked to specific rooms. Kitchen furniture is formed from biochar bricks made from the space’s own organic waste; a pollinator wall on the balcony is constructed from mycelium blocks harvested from the light well and processed in the storage; and biofuel is generated in the garage from decomposed food waste.

The Metabolic Home’s cyclical processes create new domestic typologies and programmatic alliances, while intelligence is reimagined as material interconnection—enabling new forms of cohabitation and decarbonization in the dense city.