Canada Council for the Arts presents Picoplanktonics at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia Français
OTTAWA,ON, May 8, 2025 /CNW/ - The Canada Council for the Arts is pleased to present Picoplanktonics at the Canada Pavilion as part of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from May 10 to November 23, 2025.
Amidst the ongoing global climate crisis, the Living Room Collective has developed a ground-breaking exhibition that showcases the potential for collaboration between humans and nature. Comprised of 3D printed structures that contain live cyanobacteria capable of carbon sequestration, Picoplanktonics is an exploration of our potential to co-operate with living systems by co-constructing spaces that remediate the planet rather than exploit it.
The Living Room Collective's exhibition is the culmination of four years of collaborative research by Andrea Shin Ling and various interdisciplinary contributors. It is focused on harnessing the design principles of living systems to develop sustainable, intelligent and resilient materials and technologies for the future. By leveraging ancient biological processes alongside emergent technologies, it proposes designing environments under an ecology-first ethos.
When visitors enter the Canada Pavilion, they will encounter 3D printed structures that were originally fabricated in an ETH Zürich laboratory. These are the largest living material structures produced using a first-of-its-kind biofabrication platform capable of printing living structures at an architectural scale. The unique Picoplanktonics experience stems from adapting the Canada Pavilion to provide enough light, moisture, and warmth for the living cyanobacteria within the structures to grow, thrive and change. For the duration of the exhibition, caretakers will be onsite tending to the structures, emphasizing care and stewardship as essential elements of the design.
As global carbon emissions continue to rise to untenable levels, Picoplanktonics presents a vision of how a regenerative system of construction could operate. It is an ongoing experiment centered on leveraging the reciprocal relationship between living structures, the built environment, and humans. In this way, the Living Room Collective is rethinking building principles and prioritizing ecological resilience beyond human species survival.
"The Canada Council for the Arts is delighted to unveil Picoplanktonics by the Living Room Collective at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Through the lens of architecture, this year's Canadian exhibition brings technological innovation and ecological stewardship together. It is a unique exhibition, sure to inspire global audiences and to ignite important conversations, about how our built environment might better house and use natural systems for a more sustainable future."
– Michelle Chawla, Director and CEO, Canada Council for the Arts
"Picoplanktonics marks four years of research at ETH Zürich with international collaborators in material science, biology, robotics, and computational design. As we move these living prototypes into the Canada Pavilion, we are thrilled to invite the public into this open experiment and reveal all phases of the material's life, including growth, sickness, and death, while collectively imagining a regenerative design approach that seeks planetary remediation."
–Andrea Shin Ling, The Living Room Collective
Commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts, this year's exhibition, Picoplanktonics, curated by the Living Room Collective, was selected through a juried competition. The selection committee was comprised of: Aziza Chaouni (architect, principal, Aziza Chaouni Projects and associate professor, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto); David Garneau (Métis, painter, curator, critical art writer and professor, Visual Arts Department, University of Regina); Daniel Pearl (architect, principal, L'OEUF Architectes and professor, School of Architecture, Université de Montréal); Siamak Hariri (architect, founding partner, Hariri Pontarini Architects); and Sepake Angiama (curator, educator, and artistic director, Institute for International Visual Art).
About the Commissioner, The Canada Council for the Arts
The Canada Council for the Arts is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. The Council champions and invests in artistic excellence through a broad range of grants, services, prizes and payments to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations. Its work ensures that unique, vibrant and diverse art and literature engages persons from across Canada, enriches their communities and reaches markets around the world. The Council also raises public awareness and appreciation of the arts through its communication, research and arts promotion activities.
About the Living Room Collective
The Living Room Collective is a group of architects, scientists, artists and educators who work at the intersection of architecture, biology and digital fabrication technologies—led by Canadian architect and biodesigner Andrea Shin Ling. Alongside core team members Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui and Clayton Lee, the collective seeks to move society away from exploitative systems of production to regenerative ones by inventing design methods and processes that center on natural systems. They see the Biennale Architettura 2025 as a platform to generate national and international conversations that ask: How does one fabricate a biological architecture? What are the conditions of stewardship? What are the strategies to instigate this at scale, regionally and globally? Biographies of the Living Room Collective members are available online from the Canada Council's website.
Contributors and Collaborators
Research and Development: ETH Zurich-: Andrea Shin Ling, Yo-Cheng Jerry Lee, Nijat Mahamaliyev, Hamid Peiro, Dalia Dranseike, Yifan Cui, Pok Yin Victor Leung, Barrak Darweesh │ Production: ETH Zurich: Huang Su, Wenqian Yang, Che-Wei Lin, Sukhdevsinh Parmar; Tobias Hartmann, Michael Lyrenmann, Luca Petrus, Jonathan Leu, Philippe Fleischmann, Oliver Zgraggen, Paul Fischlin, Mario Hebing, Franklin Füchslin; Hao Wu, Nicola Piccioli-Cappelli, Roberto Innocenti, Sigurd Rinde, Börte Emiroglu, Stéphane Bernhard, Carlo Pasini, Apoorv Singh, Paul Jaeggi; Mario Guala, Isabella Longoni; Toronto Metropolitan University: Venessa Chan, Minh Ton, Daniel Wolinski, Marko Jovanovic, Santino D'Angelo Rozas, Rachel Kim, Alexandra Waxman, Richard McCulloch, Stephen Waldman, Tina Smith, Andrea Skyers, Randy Ragan, Emma Grant, Shira Gellman, Mariska Espinet, Suzanne Porter, Stacey Park, Amanda Wood, Lisa Landrum, Dorothy Johns, Cedric Ortiz; University of Toronto: Daniel Lewycky, Philipp Cop; Additive Tectonics GmbH | Visualisation: Adrian Yu. Nazanin Kazemi, Ariel Weiss│ Structural Advisors: Andrea Menardo, Kam-Ming Mark Tam | Graphic Design: Shannon Lin │ Website: Sigurd Rinde, Shannon Lin │ Local Project Logistics: Tamara Andruszkiewicz │ Project Advisors: ETH Zurich: Benjamin Dillenburger, Mark Tibbitt
Partners and Sponsors
Picoplanktonics is made possible by the generous support from the Canada Council, Digital Building Technologies, Institute of Technology & Architecture, D-ARCH, ETH Zurich; Department of Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University; and John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto. As well, acknowledges the important additional support of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada; Advanced Engineering with Living Materials (ALIVE) Initiative, ETH Zurich; Additive Tectonics GmbH; ABB Switzerland; Vestacon Limited and NEUF Architect(e)s.
KEY DATES
May 8 at 12:00 p.m. CET, the Canada Council for the Arts will host an inauguration of Picoplanktonics at the Canada Pavilion with remarks by the Canada Council, Embassy of Canada to Italy and the Living Room Collective.
May 10 at 10:00 a.m. CET, the Picoplanktonics will open to the public for the duration of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from May 10 to November 26, 2025.
IMAGES
Images may be downloaded at the following link: 2025 Canada Council Venice Brandfolder
Photo credit: Living Room Collective (and/or as listed on the site)
WEB AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Picoplanktonics website: www.picoplanktonics.com | Instagram: @picoplanktonics
Canada Council for the Arts website: www.canadacouncil.ca
Facebook: @CanadaCouncil | X: @CanadaCouncil | Instagram: @canada.council
SOURCE Canada Council for the Arts
Communications and Engagement, Canada Council for the Arts: [email protected] ; Vincent Despins, TACT Conseil: [email protected]
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