19th Biennale Architettura: Interview with L. Kallipoliti and A. Markopoulou

Interview: Michalis Mousmoulis, Architect Consultant of Greece 

In an interview with us, architects Dr. Lydia Kallipoliti, Associate Professor at Columbia University and Director of the Advanced Architectural Design Program, and Dr. Areti Markopoulou, architect and urban technologist, Director of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and co-founder of StudioP52, spoke about their experiential project presented at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale: “Metabolic Home: New Forms of Cohabitation and Decarbonization in the Dense City.”

Their work is a bold proposal for the home of the future—where technology, circular economy, and sustainability converge in a self-sustaining ecosystem.

According to A. Markopoulou their project “is an effort to give an answer to the current challenges of inhabitation related to the fact that the construction sector is impacting negatively not only the environment but also society, economy and biodiversity”.

Furthermore, “the Metabolic Home is a closed loop system of a house where humans, microbes but also machines co-inhabit. What is interesting in the concept of sustainability in the housing is that usually the solutions we are seeking for are external. In our concept we are thinking totally different so the metabolism of our house could not operate If the humans and non humans are not inhabiting the space”, she underlines.

At the same time, L. Kallipoliti explains “it was also important to us to situate the Metabolic Home within a Greek city. The framing of the home is the existing urban structure of the greek “polykatoikia”. We kind of took a crop in that project of an existing typology of a house that is situating horizontal habitation in a way the majority of the Greek population lives in urban environments”.

“We really wanted to not to create a fantastical setting of a house, but to work within rehabilitating the urban structure which is an important topic because all of “polykatoikias” are based on concrete and that has a certain life span, which is currently started to expire and needs rehabilitation”, she emphasizes.