Project was an installation for Biennale Architettura 2021: ‘How Will We Live Together?’ after 6-month collaboration with UCLA’s Human Connectome Project and Harvard’s Sabri Ülker Center.
Immersive, audio-visual, and 3D-printed architectural structure created by AI algorithm using 70 Terabytes of DTI and fMRI data collected from approximately 4500 people from different age groups to generate a sculpture that artificially imagines human neural networks and how it would perceive spatial information.
Curatorial Text:
Through collaboration between Dr. Taylor Kuhn, coordinator of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) at UCLA, Refik Anadol Studio developed a dynamic network at the intersection of neuroscience and design to study fundamental questions about the architecture of the human brain. Approximately 70 Terabytes of multimodal MRI data, including structural, diffusion (DTI) and functional (fMRI) scans of people ranging from birth to nonagenarians and beyond are used to train machine-learning algorithms that discover patterns and imagine the development of brain circuitry throughout the human lifespan. Using this groundbreaking approach, Refik Anadol Studio was able to generate a fully immersive, augmented 3D brain model, Sense of Space.
Molecular Architecture is a manifestation of infinitely dynamic and molecularly defined biological forms on the nanoscopic scale at a never before achieved detail. Based on the data collected from Prof. Hotamisligil’s years-long study at Harvard University and Sabri Ülker Center on the relationship between metabolic health and certain chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, the augmented sculptures of Molecular Architecture emerge from the application of cutting-edge FIB-SEM imaging, segmentation of 22, 035 sections collected from a 1m µ3 volume, machine learning, and 3D constructions and printing techniques. They aim to accurately represent the spectacular resolution of inner architecture of liver cells and their biochemical and physiological constellations of healthy and unhealthy cell structures that will define the future of global human health.