Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary Logo

Designing with life, not against it: When buildings learn from bacteria
Book presentation at La Casa de la Arquitectura

14 January 2026

Current Events & Education Programming Public Program Publications Recommended Upcoming

English and Spanish without translation nor interpretation / Free entrance with prior registration here.

 

Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley present We the Bacteria. Notes Toward Biotic Architecture, a timely and provocative manifesto for rethinking architecture through a biological lens. Drawing on recent research into microbial life, the authors propose a shift in perspective that recognizes bacteria not as enemies of architecture, but as its fundamental agents, shaping how buildings are constructed, inhabited, maintained, and understood. By tracing the deep entanglement of microbes, bodies, and buildings over the past 10,000 years, the book reframes the history of architecture and questions its antibiotic-driven paradigms.

 

At its core, the publication argues that many of today’s global crises, from declining biodiversity to antibiotic resistance, are inseparable from the way we design and inhabit the built environment. It calls for a transition from architectures rooted in fear, sterility, and exclusion toward forms of shelter based on coexistence, care, and symbiosis with microbial life. This vision resonates strongly with the work of TBA21, whose artistic and research-driven programs explore the interdependencies between humans, nonhuman life, and systems of our planet. 

 

The contributors of this presentation include Iñaqui Carnicero (Secretary General for Urban Agenda, Housing and Architecture at the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda), Andrés Jaque (Spanish architect, scholar, writer and curator) and Uriel Fogué (Spanish Architect, researcher and professor).

DATE

January 14, 2026

7:00 PM

LOCATION

La Casa de la Arquitectura

MORE INFORMATION

HERE

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Beatriz Colomina is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and the founding director of the Media and Modernity program at Princeton University. She has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, sexuality and media. Her books include “Sexuality and Space” (1992), “Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media” (1994), “Domesticity at War” (2007), “Clip/Stamp/Fold” (2010), “Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design” (2016), with Mark Wigley, “X-Ray Architecture” (2019) and “Radical Pedagogies” (2022).

 

Mark Wigley is a Professor and Dean Emeritus at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. As an architectural theorist and historian, Wigley explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. His publications include “Buckminster Fuller Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio” (2016), “Cutting Matta-Clark: The Anarchitecture Investigation” (2018) and “Are We Human: Notes on an Archaeology of Design” that he published together with Beatriz Colomina in association with their curation of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial. Wigley was born in New Zealand, where trained as an architect, and lives in New York.