Amphibious Architecture

A couple years back, we posted on a collaborative project between The Living, Chris Woebken, and Natalie Jeremijenko’s Environmental Health Clinic. The now completed Amphibious Architecture project seeks to captivate participants by immersing them into the ebbs and flows of aquatic ecosystems…

image credit: Natalie Jeremijenko

A couple years back, we posted on a collaborative project between The Living, Chris Woebken, and Natalie Jeremijenko’s Environmental Health Clinic.  The now completed Amphibious Architecture project seeks to captivate participants by immersing them into the ebbs and flows of aquatic ecosystems — areas that are generally under-explored and under-engaged in the public realm.  Installed in the East and Bronx Rivers in New York City, the glowing flotilla consists of sensors below the water and lights above.  The sensors monitor water quality and fish presence, and the lights react to the information being collected by their gatherer counterparts below the water.  Anyone can text message the sensors to receive real time information about the status of the river.  This urge to make the invisible visible to the public is compelling, overlapping a myriad of social and ecological networks throughout the city.

The team further describes the aim of the project as such:

Instead of treating the rivers with a “do-not-disturb” approach, the project encourages curiosity and engagement. Instead of treating the water as a reflective surface to mirror our own image and our own architecture, the project establishes a two-way interface between environments of land and water.

image credit: Natalie Jeremijenko
You May Also Like

Juhani Pallasmaa

Every now and again we find something on the web, or in print or, in a museum, and say "Gosh! We should have had that up on the site a while ago." During some recent web-trolling we came across this fantastic little piece by Juhani Pallasmaa, the acclaimed Finish Architect, Professor and Artist.
Read More

Syn-Urban Assemblages

Throughout North America, the suburbs are a pervasive condition that emerge at the periphery of every major metropolitan…

Philip Beesley’s Hilozoic Soil

...the glass-like fragility of this artificial forest, built of an intricate lattice of small transparent acrylic tiles, is visually breathtaking. Its frond extremities arch uncannily towards those who venture into its midst, reaching out to stroke and be stroked like the feather or fur or hair of some mysterious animal.... [Fundacion Telefonica Jury, 1st prize, VIDA 11.0]