Posts tagged ‘climate change’
Coding Plants
Coding Plants: An Artificial Reef and Living Kelp Archive
19th International Architecture Exhibition: Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
Venice, May 10 – Nov. 23, 2025.
This is a neo-natural kelp reef where architectural records are transformed into edible proteins. Encased in air-tight vitrines, a collection of suspended, dried seaweed specimens showcases a transgenic process. Scientists have embedded encoded information—texts, images, and drawings—directly into the genetic material of this engineered vegetation, effectively turning the reef into a living, edible library. The 3D model at the center of the reef physically represents the phrase Form Follows Function, ciphered in the AGTC sequence of DNA. This exhibition is accompanied by the sound composition Earth Ocean, by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky.
The title Coding Plants reflects our vision of embedding digital information into living systems to transform how we design and build. A single gram of plant DNA can theoretically store up to 215 million gigabytes of data. The project articulates a dual premise: the encoding of semantic and spatial information within botanical systems, and the broader implication of living matter as programmable infrastructure. While kelp is technically a macroalgae, not a plant, we use the term “plants” broadly—referring both to botanical life and to systems of production, as in “manufacturing plants.” Kelp serves as our transgenic prototype due to its ecological value and its potential for DNA-based data storage. The name signals a future in which living organisms—plant or otherwise—become computational, functional elements of architecture.
In the future, libraries won’t be built, but grown. Botanical organisms will be genetically augmented to store the knowledge of specific architectural forms—houses, bridges, communal spaces, and more—that can be extracted and used to challenge polluting construction methods. The goal is to design urban environments that adapt and evolve in balance with their surrounding metabolism. Plants will function as living archives, encoding detailed information within their DNA, allowing users to guide and influence their growth and structural form. This approach integrates radical sustainability directly into a semi-natural ecosystem, creating a harmonious blend of hybrid nature and human innovation.
Coding Plants is a synthetic living reef that serves as the ultimate archive of design knowledge. By embedding complex architectural intelligence into live organisms, Coding Plants proposes a climate positive agenda in which nature is empowered at the genetic level. While this vision may appear speculative, it is grounded in recent breakthroughs in genetic engineering. This approach heralds a fertile architecture that reimagines conventional building practices while fostering resilience, adaptability, and ecosystem integration.
Publications
“Coding Plants,” Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective: Exhibition Catalogue, Carlo Ratti (ed.)(Venice, IT: Biennale Architectura, 2025), 100.
“Coding Plants” e-flux architecture, May 8, 2025.
Press
«20,000 Files Under the Sea,» NYU News, July 30, 2025.
“In Venice, an Architecture Biennale with a Dystopian Flair“, Architectural Record, May 30, 2025.
“Maybe Venice is the city that can save the world, BBC, May 26, 2025.
“Apre la Biennale di Venezia,” Interni, May 9, 2025.
“La mostra Intelligens,” Elle decor, May 10, 2025.
“Harvard Graduate School of Design Community Makes a Strong Showing at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale,” GSD News, May 9, 2025.
Credits
Project: Terreform ONE, Mitchell Joachim, Peder Anker, Melanie Fessel, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky). Studio: Vivian Kuan (Executive Director), Julie Bleha. Design: David Paraschiv, Emily Young, Sky Achitoff, Avantika Velho, JJ Zhijie Jin. Science: Sebastian S. Cocioba, Chris Woebken, Oliver Medvedik. Collaborators: Wendy W. Fok, WE-DESIGNS. Media: Michelle Alves De Lima. Research: Nicholas Lynch, Ava Hudson, Marina Ongaro, Jerzelle Lim, Helen Gui. Sponsors: U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, Global Research Initiatives, Office of the Provost, New York University. Global Design NYU, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. Oslo School of Architecture and Design. RheinMain University of Applied Sciences. Special Thanks: Carlo Ratti, Curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition. Victoria Rosner, Dean of Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
For the Love of Bombs
For the Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering (London: Anthem Press, 2025).
Abstract
The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U.S. scholars. The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the nuke’s ‘father’, is repeatedly centre stage, as in the case of the recent film about him. These are elitist stories that more often than not ignore the suffering and violence of the bomb to laypeople in general, and to marginalised groups in particular. Starting with the gruesome mining of uranium by First Nation people in northern Canada, and continuing with the racialist culture of uranium enrichment in the Atomic City of Oak Ridge, Peder Anker offers alternative perspectives. It’s a story of how the bikini swimwear came to fetishise the nuclear bombardment of the Bikini Atoll with its celebration of ‘sex bombs’ and (an)atomic ‘bombshells’. Our current global warming fears also hearken back to ordinary citizens wondering if atomic bombs would blow up the entire sky. If some of this was news to you, it might have to do with how the story of nuclear bombs has been told.
Review
“Bomben er ingen metafor,” Ny tid, April 20, 2025. [PDF]
Blog and op-eds
“Leslie R. Groves Invented the Atomic Bomb,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July 21, 2025.
“Farewell Oppenheimer” Anthem, Jan. 29. 2025.
“The stories ‘Oppenheimer’ didn’t tell” Washington Post, March 15, 2024. [PDF]
“Årets verste film” Klassekampen, March 13, 2024. [PDF]
Podcast
New Books Network, with Miranda Melcher, March 30, 2025.
In the news
Janae Antrum, “Understanding the narrative 80 Years Later: African Americans and the A-bomb,” New York Amsterdam News, July 24, 2025.
Jade McClain, “Gallatin Professor Wants the Oppenheimer Narrative Up in Smoke,” NYU News, April 17., 2025.
Get the book
US $ | Eur € | Brit £ | Can $ | Barnes & Noble | Anthem Press
Views from the Outside
Climate change is a critical challenge facing our communities. Studies conducted by IPCC and other entities continue to demonstrate the enormous magnitude of this challenge and the increasing need for more effective responses at both the adaptation and mitigation levels. The complex causes of climate change and its diverse impact on our communities make this need more challenging. Making things more complicated, understanding these causes and consequences, as well as the possible solutions, requires us to look at the problem through multiple disciplinary lenses.
Peder Anker, Marty Matlock, Malkin Shoshan & Hazem Rashed-Ali, “Views from the Outside” in Technology/Architecture + Design, 8(1) (2024), 8–10. [PDF]
Design Against Extinction
This article reviews the eco-social design work of students at the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University over the last decade. Environmental justice movements and the effects of global warming pose significant challenges to the architecture of dwellings, landscapes, and urban design communities. In response, students have placed socially and ecologically sensitive projects at the center of their design education. The justifiable moral outrage of our students has prompted us and them to rethink the methods by which we teach and imagine social environmentalism from the perspective of equity, inclusion, and the biosphere.
“Design Against Extinction at New York University,” with Mitchell Joachim, Spool, 10:1 (2023), 121-132. [PDF]
Archiagape
Perhaps the architecture profession needs a new name? How about replacing “architecture” with “archiagape”? This is the lecture I gave at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in May 2021. Published as “Archiagape” in Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural, Chris Perry (et.al.) (eds.), (Barcelona: Actar, 2022), 298-302. [PDF]
Livet er best ute
Livet er best ute: Friluftslivets historie og filosofi, (Oslo: Kagge Forlag, 2022)
Livet er best ute. Eller er det egentlig det, spør Peder Anker i denne boken om friluftslivets historie og filosofi. Med friluftslivet som et utgangspunkt forteller Anker om våre uartikulerte verdier og tradisjoner, slik de ser ut fra fjellet, skogen og svaberget. For lengselen etter friluftslivet er det vi har felles, mener han.
Denne boken har han skrevet for alle de som synes livet er best ute. Leseren trenger ikke noen andre egenskaper for å bli med på å utforske hva friluftslivet er for noe. Anker tar leseren med på en personlig vandring igjennom friluftslivets historie, kultur og filosofi. Det er en tur i et mykt lettgått terreng, med en og annen utfordrende skrent. For det må til for å nå fjellets topp. Der får leseren hvile sine tanker ved varme kilder. Selv om turen er rimelig enkel, så er den på ingen måte ufarlig. Det er mektige motkrefter som undergraver friluftslivet, påpeker Anker, både i oss selv og i samfunnet rundt oss. Friluftslivet er truet. Denne boken søker derfor å fornye og utfordre, med vekt på naturvern.
Kjøp boken i din lokale bokhandel, på Norli, Akademika, Ark bokhandel, eller rett fra Kagge Forlag.
Bla i boka
Les de første 30 sidene gratis her.
Omtale
Runar Larsen, “Jul med din leseglede,” VG: Magainset Reiselyst, 9 desember, 2022.
Emil L. Mohr, “Tilbake til naturen,” Dagens Næringsliv, 22 oktober 2022. [PDF side 1-2, PDF side 3]
Vemund Sveen Finstad, “Et spørsmål om vern”, Aftenposten: Historie, 8 sept. 2022.
Maria Birkeland Olerud, “Drømmen om Kristi gjenoppstandelse ble hetende bærekraftig utvikling,” Vårt land, 28 juli, 2022. [PDF]
Anmeldelser
Marte Ostmoe, “Hva er egentlig et friluftsliv?” Padling, 4 november 2023. [PDF]
Anders Horntvedt, “Selfies, fjellyoga og profittjagende hyener,” Finansavisen, 3 februar, 2023. [PDF]
Rolf Kjøde, “Friluftsromantikk mot fritidskapitalisme,” For Bibel og Bekjennelse, 6 september, 2022.
Tom Hetland, “Norsk friluftsglede sett frå New York,” Stavanger Aftenblad, 21 august, 2022. [PDF]
Espen Søbye, “Er nå livet egentlig best ute?” Morgenbladet, 5 august, 2022. [PDF]
Podkast
“Friluftslivets historie” Historier som endred Norge, 3 april, 2023, med Christian Gilsvik.
“Den norske miljødebatten” Historier som endred Norge, 20 mars, 2023, med Christian Gilsvik.
“Livet er best ute” Ideer, Tankesmien Agenda, 17 februar, 2023, med Hilde Nagel.
“Friluftslivets filosofi og motstraums reiselyst” Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 23 august, 2022, med Gunnar Garfors og moderert av Margunn Vikingstad.
Utdrag
“Hold kjeft stedet,” Vagabond reiselyst, 10 (2022), 51. [PDF].
“Jeg har revet varder. Mange av dem,” Harvest magazin, 16 juli 2022. [PDF]
Bokbad og presentasjoner
“Norsk friluftsliv vs. Amerikansk outdoor life”, Norsk Folkemuseum, May 2. 2024.
“Landscape Architecture”, International Federation of Landscape Architects, NMBU, Feb. 27. 2024.
Bokbad, Amundsen Sport, New York, Nov. 2 2023
Bokbad, Porsgrunn bibliokte, Porsgrunn, Aug. 29, 2023.
Bokbad, Norsk Sjømannskirke, New York, Dec. 7 2022.
Bokbad, Norsk skogmuseum, Elverum, Nov. 24 2022.
Bokbad, Akademika bokhandel, Bø i Telemark, Nov. 23 2022.
Institutt for friluftsliv, idrett og kroppsøving, Universitetet i sørøst Norge, Bø i Telemark, Nov. 23 2022.
Østfoldmuseene, Halden, Nov. 7. 2022.
Boklansering, Oslo, 17 august, 2022.
TV
“Klimakrisen” TV2 Nyheter, 6, 8 og 9. april, 2023.
NRK Kveldsnytt, 15 august, 2022.
NRK Nyhetsmorgen, 8 august, 2022.
Radio
NRK Hordaland, 23 august, 2022.
NRK P2-Pulsen, 21 juli, 2022.
Ukichiro Nakaya’s Sense of Snow
“Ukichiro Nakaya’s Sense of Snow” with Sverker Sörlin, in Letters Sent from Heaven: Frozen and Vaporized Water: Ukichiro Nakaya and Fujiko Nakaya’s Science and Art, Jonatan Habib Engqvist and Marianne Hultman (eds.), (Oslo: OK Book, 2022), 125-131. [PDF].
Book Talk: The Power of the Periphery
Book Talk: The Power of the Periphery: How Norway became an Environmental Pioneer for the World. Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, Oct. 6 2020.
In conversation with Eric Klinenberg. Recording on YouTube
My review of Climate in Motion
Deborah R. Coen, Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
H-Environment Roundtable Reviews, Jan. 17., 2020. [PDF]
A pioneer country? A history of Norwegian climate politics
“A pioneer country? A history of Norwegian climate politics” Climatic Change, (Online March 2016), 1-13. Journal edition 151:1 (2018), 29-41.
Download PDF.
The shift away from ecology towards climatology in Norwegian environmental policy in the late 1980s and 1990s was not accidental. A main mover was the Labor Party politician Gro Harlem Brundtland who did not want to deal with unruly and highly vocal Deep Ecologists. Better then to start afresh with a different set of environmental scholars appealing to the technocratic tradition within the Labor Party. Instead of changing the ethical and social ways of dealing with environmental problems as the Deep Ecologists were advocating, she was looking for technological and economic solutions. And she mobilized an international regime of carbon capture storage (CCS), tradable carbon emissions quota (TEQs), and clean development mechanisms (CDMs), all of which eventually were approved in Kyoto in 1997. This move towards technocracy and cost-benefit economics reflects a post-Cold War turn towards utilitarian capitalism, but also a longing to showcase Norway as an environmental pioneer country to the world. The underlying question was how to reconcile the nation’s booming petroleum industry with reduction in climate gas emissions. Should the oil and gas stay underground and the country strive towards the ecologically informed zerogrowth society the Deep Ecologists were envisioning? Or could growth in the petroleum industry take place without harming the environment as the Labor Party environmentalists argued?
Peder Anker 