Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

LifeObject

Merging Biology and Architecture

The LifeObject book brings together a wide variety of research that examines new relationships being formed between man and his environment, invalidating the binary distinction between nature and culture, and re-framing architecture as part of a wider ecology. The exhibition centers around ‘The LifeObject,’ a freestanding structure based on a 3D scan of a bird’s nest, alongside seven speculative “scenarios” that pair together biologists and architects to solve local challenges.

Interspersed throughout the book are fragments of the biological-architectural phrasebook which constitutes a framework for the exhibition in which biological concepts receive architectural interpretations in a wider cultural context. The phrasebook encourages new ways of thinking about architecture and biology, with the terms serving as a tagging system spread out throughout the book. In echo of the overall approach of the LifeObject, the entire book functions according to a rhizomatic structure without any clear borderlines.

The platform established by the exhibition is expressed through four sections of distinct content and visual characterizations which are interwoven throughout the book: theoretical texts, case studies (speculative projects of teams of scientists and architechts) , The LifeObject, and a phrasebook. The dispersal of these four typologies suggests different relationships between the topics and fields treated by the exhibition.

Dr. Yael Eylat Van Essen’s curatorial text, is one of five theoretical papers included in the book. Her text lays the theoretical ground work for the exhibition and book engaging extensively with the concept of resilience, which constitutes LifeObject’s central conceptual axis. Breaking down the oppositions which have long separated the natural from the artificial enhances the sustainability and resilience of human systems. The contributing texts engage with resilience be it architectural, political, or cultural.

Prof. Eva Jablonka in her paper “Constructing a Niche: Learning from Animal Architects” examines the relationship between living creatures and their environment in changing conditions through the biological concept of niche construction;

Associate Prof. Yasha J. Grobman draws an historical survey of the employment of biological ideas in architectural design in Israel, from its inception as a new state, in the context of similar approaches around the world.

Dr. Ayelet Zohar’s text “Mergence and Emergence: A Biological Model for Reading the Israeli Architectural and Political Space”, transposes biological models of mergence and emergence into the transformation of the Palestinian landscape into the State of Israel;

Dr. Els Verbakel in “Out of the Wild: Challenging Israel’s Comfort City”, relates in a critical way to the Zionist ethos of “conquering the wilderness” that dramatically influenced the development of the urban landscape in Israel.