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EDIBLE, Or; The Architecture of Metabolism Conference

Friday, November 18, 2022, 5 - 8pm

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TAB — Tallin Architecture Biennial: Hayley Eber and Mae-Ling Lokko, Everything is on the Table. Image Credit: Evert Palmets

TAB — Tallin Architecture Biennial: Hayley Eber and Mae-Ling Lokko, Everything is on the Table. Image Credit: Evert Palmets.
TAB — Tallin Architecture Biennial: Metabolic House Performance. Image Credit: Evert Palmets, 2022.

Metabolic House, conceived by curators Lydia Kallipoliti & Areti Markopoulou. Performance coordinated by Maria Ader. Tallinn Architecture biennale 2022. Image Credit: Evert Palmets, 2022. 
TAB — Tallin Architecture Biennial: Archeology of Architecture and Food by Lydia Kallipoliti, Sonia Ralston and Sanjana Lahiri. Image Credit: Petros Pattakos.

Lydia Kallipoliti, Sonia Ralston and Sanjana Lahiri, "Archeology of Architecture and Food." Tallin Architecture biennale, 2022. Image Credit: Petros Pattakos.

This conference will be conducted in-person in the Peter Cooper Suite and through Zoom. 

For in-person attendance, please register in advance here. 
For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

EDIBLE is a conference bringing together participants of the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale to The Cooper Union in New York. Their encounter aims to generate a profound debate on the intersections of architecture, food systems, and regenerative design.

EDIBLE seeks to reveal how architecture constructs, distributes, and leverages power via material upcycling, interspecies alliances, biopolitics and excremental processes. It maps and redraws the affinities of the built environment as a product of many forces, translated in the tensions between products and by-products, production, and consumption and, finally, creation and decomposition.

Participants will be called to reflect on how architecture may redefine the notion of resources; produce food, and be eaten away? How can we define the architecture of metabolism?

The conference is organized by Lydia Kallipoliti, associate professor of architecture at The Cooper Union and co-curator of the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale, along with Areti Markopoulou, academic director of the Institute for Advanced Architecture in Catalonia (IAAC). It is kindly supported by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union.

Participants include Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation and Dean of GSAPP, Columbia University), Hayley Eber AR'01 (Acting Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union), Lola Ben-Alon (assistant professor of architecture at GSAPP, Columbia University, and director of the Natural Materials Lab), Sharon Yavo-Ayalon (adjunct assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP and postdoctoral associate at Cornell Tech), Andreas Theodoridis (Research Affiliate, Yale Center for Ecosystems Research and Principal of United Atmospheres), Sonia Ralston (assistant curator at the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale), Sanjana Lahiri AR'22 (architect), Mitchell Joachim (principal and co-founder of Terreform ONE, and associate professor of practice at NYU) and Caroline O’Donnell (Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University).

The EDIBLE catalog will be on site for sale following the lectures, during a reception. In addition to the projects of the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale participants, the catalog includes essays from the “Digestion” architecture series edited by e-flux architecture, featuring contributions by Mark Wigley; Rachel Armstrong and Rolf Hughes; Montserrat Bonvehi-Rosich; Aude-Line Duliere, Juliet Haysom, and James Westcott; Reif Larsen; Mae-ling Lokko; Meredith TenHoor; Lindsey Wikstrom; and Feifei Zhou, Zahirah Suhaimi, and Jefree Salim.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

View the full Fall 2022 Lectures and Events List. 

Please refer to our building access COVID-19 policy below:

Any guests to campus are required to show proof of a vaccine to enter a Cooper Union Building and the Residence Hall. 

Stay safe and keep a 6-foot distance. We ask that you maintain a 6-foot distance from all members outside of your party while on campus.   

Please reschedule if not feeling well. If any members of your party are not feeling well, please stay home and reschedule your visit.  

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