GENOM

eVolo
Skyscraper Competition 2016
made in cooperation with Dmitrova Kristina

The modern world, and Russia in particular, is undergoing a construction boom. Cities are growing at increasing rates, creating a variety of ecological problems. Construction companies are constantly expanding living and working space to accommodate a growing number of consumers. This amounts to millions of square meters per year.

The approach to architectural design is becoming more transdisciplinary, combining different sciences such as biology, chemistry and genetics. An emerging method of reconstruction from self-assembled biological materials was developed on the basis of the programmed genetic code with the help of which self-building and self-reconstruction will be possible. The abandoned business center "Zenit" in Moscow, Russia is our goal for the reconstruction. By 1995, it had been finished by 85%. This abandoned building has a height of 22 floors and a total area of 100 thousand square meters. The building is located near the city center and is easily visible from the surrounding areas.

In order to give the building a new life, we use a natural phenomenon of symbiosis by placing inside of it two complementary living organisms that merge to form a new bearing engineering construction of the building and a living adaptive façade. These organisms are transgenic structures. Due to combinations of the required genetic characteristics of DNA taken from 8 different plants, we get a completely unique species of the growing living organism. The moss Yagel was taken as the genetic basis with its unique properties of cold resistance and stamina; a number of plants were taken as minor genes, supplementing the body with such properties as flexibility, light sensitivity, porosity and strength.