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Habitat One: The architecture of the carbon neutral city.

ecoLogicStudio

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Bronze
Habitat One at Hyundai MotorStudio, Seoul. - © Yoon, Joonhwan
BioLab entrance - © Yoon, Joonhwan
Habitat One at Hyundai MotorStudio, Seoul. - © Yoon, Joonhwan
Habitat One at Hyundai MotorStudio, Seoul. - © Yoon, Joonhwan

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JURY VOTES
Exhibition
7.24
6.47
7.00
6.60
6.82
Weiping Lin
Weiping Lin Founder and Design Director at Lin Wei Ping Design Consulting
7
6.5
7
7
6.88
Filip Milovanovic
Filip Milovanovic Design Director at Yabu Pushelberg
Project is a lab that provides educ...
7
6
7
6
6.5
Ludmila Machado
Ludmila Machado Founder at Aurora Design
7.5
6
6
7
6.63
David Kulen
David Kulen Creative Director at Powerplant
8
8
7
6
7.25
Isabelle Kievenheim
Isabelle Kievenheim Head of Store Development at & Other Stories H&M Group
7
6
6
7
6.5
Luca Macri
Luca Macri Partner at Lamatilde
8
6
7.5
6
6.88
Mark Timo
Mark Timo Founder at De Interieur Club
7
7
7
7
7
Michelle Smith
Michelle Smith Associate Designer at M Moser Associates
8
7
8
8
7.75
Terry Xu
Terry Xu Chief Designer at Masanori Design Studio
8
7
8
8
7.75
Drew Gilbert
Drew Gilbert Design Manager at OBMI
8.1
6.58
7.38
6.66
7.18
Apoorva Shroff
Apoorva Shroff Founder at lyth Design
6
6
6
6
6
Liyu Xue
Liyu Xue Founder and Creative Director at Staay
9
8
8
7
8
Marcel Häusler
Marcel Häusler Creative Director at Karl Anders
7
5
8
5
6.25
Alessandro Ranaldi
Alessandro Ranaldi Head of Workplace Consultancy at Foster and Partners
7.5
7
7
6.5
7
Llisa Demetrios
Llisa Demetrios Chief Curator at The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity
7
6
7
6
6.5
Juan Alberto Andrade
Juan Alberto Andrade Founder at Juan Alberto Andrade
6.35
6.9
6.99
7.3
6.89
Yuan Jiang
Yuan Jiang Cofounder at Soda
5
5
6
5
5.25
Yuanman Huang
Yuanman Huang Cofounder and Creative Designer at GS Design
6.81
6.4
6.09
7.33
6.66

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.