Wednesday, May 26th 6pm-8pm in the Washington Gallery at Miami Beach Urban Studios. 1618 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida 33139
The installation Borboletta by Associate Professor Eric Goldemberg is currently exhibited at the Italian Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale and will be on view from May 22nd until October 22nd, through large wall projections.
The built artifact is located at FIU-MBUS Washington Gallery and there will be an opening reception on Wednesday, May 26th from 6-8PM. Musician Pablo Fedele will play live the Borboletta guitar which is part of the installation.
-Borboletta is the result of the collaboration between:
Alessandro Melis/ Heliopolis 21 and Eric Goldemberg + Veronica Zalcberg/ MONAD Studio.
With: Dhzumhur Gyokchepanar
Borboletta Electric Bass co-created by Eric Goldemberg + Veronica Zalcberg/ MONAD Studio and William Carpenter/ LIGHTROOM
-Design and Fabrication team:
Randy Ross, Clifford Salnave, Renzo Lopez, Julian Ramirez, Sergio Aquino.
-Project 3d-printed with the support of FIU Department of Architecture and FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios.
-Experimental prototypes fabricated by Madco3d Concrete Printing.
-Video production by William Carpenter/ LIGHTROOM
With: Brian Ginn
The project is dedicated to the memory of Architect Angela Teresa Bielus de Goldemberg.
Borboletta is a mobile urban living lab and research project on the integration between microbiology, biodiversity and architecture aimed at the construction of a new urban paradigm intended as an ecosystem rather than an artifice.
In Borboletta the interest in the field of climate sensitive design becomes an instrument to discuss the urban fabric and its relationship with the troposphere in order to transform the cities in virtuous open systems reacting to the climate change. Moreover, a radical spatial re-configuration of the built environment based on the Borboletta prototype can offer opportunities for the positive development/ transformation of the current energy intensive metabolism into biomass power generation as well as for the conceptualization of a revolutionary biodiversity design.
Borboletta is not an object, a unique and recognizable item. It is instead intended as a part of hybrid landscapes generated by specific variations of the urban continuum, also involving autopoietic processes aimed to the adaptation to extreme environmental conditions.
Borboletta consists of 4 integrated entities representing the essential ingredients of a future resilient ecosystem: a variable scaffolding structure which allows interaction with the human body, the sensoriality represented by the sonic integration of a 3D-printed guitar and the Arduino feedback systems, the self-sufficient habitat oriented to the proliferation of biodiversity (multi-layered windows), and the climate responsivity of the system, through expansion and contraction of an acellular mass of creeping gelatinous protoplasm containing nuclei (Slime Mould).
The evolution of the project – whose name Borboletta refers metaphorically to the ephemeral, accelerated timeframe of a butterfly’s life – is manifested in the culminating installation for Venice, developed previously through several iterations built for Buenos Aires, Pisa, and Miami which embody the growth process envisioned to challenge the very notion of the perception of time and duration in architecture. This is the first step of an ongoing research aimed at the construction of repeatable modules for a closed loop colonisation of the urban sphere also aimed at terraforming.
Borboletta is therefore not a phenotype, but a genetically modified chrysalis meant as an evolving organism enabling eco systemic iterations and questioning conventional artefact-nature dichotomies.
To learn more about the Venice Architecture Biennale, click here
To view a video of the exhibition, click here