Tearing Down the Grid

• Published in: Design and culture 2011-03, Vol.3 (1), p.75-84
• Main Author: Cogdell, Christina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: architecture; colonialism; genetic engineering; high-tech environmentalism; sustainability; urban planning
• ISSN: 1754-7075; 1754-7083
• DOI: 10.2752/175470810X12863771378798

Concerns about global warming are prompting architects to revise past practices for new "sustainable" strategies, owing to the fact that the building sector in the US is responsible for 48 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and total energy usage. Chief among these new strategies is biomimetic design, although more recently, some leaders in computational architectural design are moving beyond biomimicry to "biosynthesis." The most extreme of these forecast the imminent use of "genetic engineering" literally to grow living products, buildings, and cities. Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner of HOLLWICHKUSHNER in New York have dramatized on YouTube their award-winning Econic Design video, picturing Atlanta as "MEtreePOLIS" in the year 2108. Genetically altered kudzu vines become the "simulated ecosystem" of the new urban landscape; this living ecoscape produces its own energy through its genetically engineered photosynthetic structural material. This review of Econic Design critically analyzes the video's narrative, showing that it reads in two directions. On the surface, it ostensibly promotes genetic engineering solutions for global warming, yet beneath the surface, a counter-narrative suggests similarities between promotions of these technologies and colonialist discourse, a similarity that places its means at odds with one major tenet of sustainability theory: social equity.