SYMBIO-GENESIS: Barcelona as an Instrument of Planetary Resonance by ISHAQ ROCHMAN

In response to the 2051 extreme heat crisis, SYMBIO-GENESIS redefines architecture in Barcelona not as a static container, but as an AI-mediated metabolic system. Selected as a Top 16 project in the 11th Advanced Architecture Contest, the project challenges the paradigm of buildings as a barrier between humans and nature, replacing it with a biological interface that actively regulates human thermal comfort while repairing planetary heat imbalances.

The system operates through a scalar continuum of non-hierarchical interconnections. Its efficacy begins at the Body Scale, where AI sensors translate human thermal stress and respiration into biological instructions. Here, architecture becomes a "living skin" that sweats through moss evapotranspiration to cool the subject without mechanical HVAC intervention.

This transition extends to the Interior and Building Scales, where porous mycelium structures act as both structural frameworks and air filters. Buildings are no longer designed based on mere aesthetic intent; instead, they "grow" and adapt according to accumulated climatic data. AI functions as a "central nervous system," synchronizing these biological behaviors within a continuous bio-digital feedback loop.

At the City Scale, Barcelona’s Eixample grid transforms into a distributed metabolic network. Buildings no longer stand in isolation; they are climate nodes that exchange nutrients and moisture through underground mycelial hyphae networks. This strategy expands to the Territorial Scale, where architecture dissolves into ecology through "metabolic gardening" that restores watersheds and regulates regional humidity).

Ultimately, Barcelona functions at the Planetary Scale. Through AI analysis of global heat migration, local interventions in Barcelona contribute to a vast planetary respiratory network. Mycelium structures serve as long-term carbon sinks, sequestering urban waste into geological stability.
With SYMBIO-GENESIS, architecture achieves homeostasis. It is no longer an object to be designed, but a living system to be continuously negotiated, an instrument ensuring that atmospheric repair begins with a sensation on human skin and resonates to the furthest reaches of the biosphere.

Project Name
SYMBIO-GENESIS

Location
Barcelona, Spain (Eixample District)

Timeline
2051 Speculative Intervention

Scale
Multiscalar (Body, Building, Urban, Territorial, Planetary)

Typology
Adaptive Infrastructure / Experimental Urbanism