Habitat One envisions a future city that evolves into our primary interface with Nature and the living world.

Centred around the pioneering architecture of Tree.One, the project introduces the experience of living in a carbon neutral world filled with metropolitan photosynthetic infrastructures of micro-algae able to convert CO2 into bio-material resources and nutritious aliments.

The exhibition, conceived and produced by ecoLogicStudio for Hyundai Motorstudio Seoul, features the AI generated video Habitat One, the Tree.One robotically “grown” living sculpture and the Urban Bio-Lab, a space illustrating the pioneering innovation behind the bio-digital synthesis of Tree.One.

Projected on the façade of the iconic Motorstudio, the Habitat One AI video envisions, in a seemingly endless looping, several scenarios for the evolution of Seoul into a carbon neutral city. In a multi-layered cyclical process, the city grows through the re-metabolization of urban air pollution, waste and the storing of CO2. Hi-density metropolitan clusters populate with sky-gardens, bio-buildings and eventually lush urban forests to evolve into new constructed landscapes. Trees and buildings alternate, literally evolving from each other, following the circular bio-design model pioneered by ecoLogicStudio.

At the heart of the main exhibition floor is Tree.One, the living carbon capturing sculpture designed by artificial intelligence and bio-digitally grown. The sculpture re-metabolises and stores carbon molecules into its trunk and canopy while releasing Oxygen in the atmosphere. It integrates 40 glass photobioreactors hosting 500 litres of cyanobacteria and capturing up to 1kg of CO2/day, equivalent to 12 large trees. 500g of bio-mass can be harvested each day, enough to print a new Tree.One every year.

The main structure of Tree.One is designed by algorithms whose recognition of arboreal systems negotiates the architectural logic of the column. The Tree.One trunk is entirely made of algae-based biopolymers and its strength derives primarily from the unique pleated morphology inspired by the fibrous trunk of actual trees. Its construction was made possible by a pioneering robotic 3D printing process. The fibrous system continues in the large 3D printed canopy in the form of hundreds of thin shading branches hovering above the gallery floor, close to the mezzanine gallery.

The mezzanine gallery is occupied by the Bio Lab, showcasing the process of bio-digital synthesis of Tree.One and of the carbon neutral city. Designed as an open laboratory, the Bio Lab presents the proprietary bio-design innovation that was developed to create Tree.One.

It is the educational component of the exhibition where visitors can follow the steps of the bio-polymerization process, observe a catalogue of biomaterial samples and several large-scale 3D printed biodegradable products and prototypes.

Bio Lab transforms the sustainable design visions promoted by the exhibition into a reality.