bI.O.serie

24.11.2020 Frankfurt
Museum für Kommunikation, Ausstellung „Back to Future“.

bI.O.serie is a living interior wall system that captures CO2, purifies and oxygenates the air. Each module is a 3D printed bioplastic reactor hosting living colonies of photosynthetic microalgae.

Conceptual montage of a bI.O.serie installation.

bI.O.serie, part of the PhotoSynthetica bio-digital innovation research line, consists of porous wall mounted 3D printed photo-bioreactors. Each reactor is a cluster of close packed cells hosting several thousands of living Chlorella SP cells. The system morhpology and spatial composition is reminiscent of the life cycle of a unique collective green algae species, called Volvox.

Volvox is unique in manifesting cellular aggregation of thousands of units in colonies that comprise up to 3 generations of cells. The material resolution and morphologic differentiation found in Volvox has been studied and algorithmically reproduced to design bI.O.serie.

Heightfield based on microscopic image of Volvox aggregations. Volvox are green algae that forms colonies of 50.000 cells including daughter and grand-daughter cells.

Their collective logic materialises in the aggregation patterns of bI.O.serie components and individual cells, each hosting living cultures of microalgae. The size of the microalgae cells is comparable with the resolution of the 3D printed reactors' cells, which has been designed and fabricated to allow sufficient airflow across the living active medium. This favours an efficient exchange thus maximising the system's ability to adsorb air pollution and carbon dioxide.

Advanced 3D printing technology and techniques were applied. Advanced fused filament deposition of transparent polycarbonate layers of 35 microns thickness.

We manufacture porous, 3Dimensional bioreactors with the same resolution of Volvox’s cells.

The co-existence of algorithmically drawn and biologically grown colonies in a living 3D printed ''boiserie'' - the bI.O.serie in several aggregation scenarios.

bI.O.serie can be installed in any interior on a vertical, oblique and curved wall. The living cultures will store and re-metabolize the toxins captured from the air transforming them into biomass, thus activating novel circular economies of matter, information and energy and contributing to a healthy urban environment.

Detail of bI.O.serie components inoculated with Chlorella SP on jellified medium.
Aggregation Scenario 01

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Simulated aggregation of bI.O.serie cells with close packing algorithm. The digital close packing algorithms simulate cellular aggregation. Through the development of this project a virtual colony of 10.000 cells was generated.

Project by
ecoLogicStudio (Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto)
Design Team
Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto with Eirini Tsomoku, Joy Boulois, Claudia Handler, Emiliano Rando.
Academic Partners
Synthetic Landscape Lab at Innsnruck University, Urban Morphogenesis Lab at the Bartlett UCl
Commission
German Cultural Foundation at the Kommunikation Museum Frankfurt and Berlin
Photography
Sven Moschitz / MSPT