TAB 2022 “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism”

TAB 2022

The 6th Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2022), organised by the Estonian Centre for Architecture, whose Opening Week will take place from September 7th – 11th, 2022 in multiple venues in the heart of Tallinn, proudly announces its programme, designed to foster dialogue, multidisciplinarity and experimentation.

Dedicated to the theme “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism”, the international architecture festival curated by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou, in collaboration with local advisor Ivan Sergejev and assistant curator Sonia Sobrino Ralston, aims to empower architects, planners, and environmental designers to take a proactive stance on architecture’s expressive capacity to perform circular operations, to generate resources – food and energy – and to self-decompose.

Addressing both architects and the general public, the TAB 2022 Official Programme consists of five main events: a Curatorial Exhibition, a Symposium, a Vision Competition Exhibition, an Installation Programme and an International Architecture Schools’ Exhibition. TAB 2022 will be accompanied by a Satellite Programme including various exhibitions, concerts, family events and much more.

Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism
On the one hand, the curatorial theme explores architectural strategies for local production and self-sufficiency, and on the other, operations that use by-products of urban life, replacing the traditional linear practices of “make, use and dispose” with circular systems that aim to limit material and resource loss.

“Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism” transfers the metabolism and experiential aptitudes of the natural world – like growth, decay, digestion, and nutrient release – to the domain of cities and buildings. Curators Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou invite audiences to reflect on food and architecture: With “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism”, we wish to question the extractive, consumptive and contaminating nature of the built environment and envision an architecture that produces resources, digests its waste and self-decomposes.

Amidst the current crisis of public health, climate change and social inequality, it becomes evident that the fragility of our supply chains urges new forms of local sourcing and production. TAB 2022 addresses “where our food comes from” as a creative design problem and raises questions on the aesthetic, cultural and experiential qualities of spaces as productive environments throughout their full lifecycles.

Alongside the exhibition of the 10 shortlisted competition proposals, the Installation Programme will present the winning project “Fungible Non-Fungible” conceived and designed by IHEARTBLOB (Austria/UK), and integrating architectural design, fabrication and funding in which the community are both designers and investors. The architect becomes a system designer who weaves together innovative technologies to empower communities and enable local craftsmanship through the usage of blockchains.

This project will be the first ever blockchain-funded architecture initiative. IHEARTBLOB, rather than designing architecture elements themselves, have built a NFT generative tool in which individuals can design and “mint” – the process of creating and authenticating digital ownership – their own objects. The application for designing a piece will go online from May 2022 and the platform will be open until July 2022, when construction is set to begin. Source by Tallinn Architecture Biennale and images Courtesy of MINT LIST.