TMU takes global stage at Venice architecture event
A look at the living, growing, changing structures. Living Room Collective: Picoplanktonics, Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2025. Commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts. Photo: Valentina Mori.
This May, TMU Architectural Science professor Vincent Hui joins an extraordinary international team of architects, scientists, artists and educators – called Living Room Collective – to unveil the exhibit Picoplanktonics at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy.
Several students from undergraduate and masters programs in TMU’s Department of Architectural Science contributed visualizations and drawings to the project. Some of these students will be in Venice to care for the installation.
Known more commonly as the Venice Biennale for Architecture, the prestigious exhibition is held every two years as an international showcase of contemporary architecture.
Inside the Canada Pavilion, the building where Canada’s submission to the Biennale is hosted, visitors will find Picoplanktonics (external link) .
Picoplanktonics is a collection of 3D printed structures. They are the largest living material structures ever produced using a first-of-its-kind biofabrication platform capable of printing living structures at an architectural scale.
The Canada Pavilion has been adapted to provide enough light, moisture, and warmth for the living cyanobacteria within the 3D printed structures to grow, thrive and change.
For the duration of the exhibition, caretakers (like those pictured above) will be onsite tending to the structures, emphasizing care and stewardship as essential elements of the design.
In response to the ongoing global climate crisis, the intention behind Picoplanktonics is to explore the potential to cooperate with living systems by co-constructing spaces that repair the planet rather than exploit it.
A close up of the picoplankton structures. Living Room Collective: Picoplanktonics, Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2025. Commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts. Photo: Girts Apskalns
The group behind Picoplanktonics, called Living Room Collective, is led by Andrea Shin Ling out of the Institute of Technology & Architecture at ETH Zurich. Other members include Vincent Hui, a distinguished professor in TMU’s Department of Architectural Science (DAS), Nicholas Hoban, the director of applied technologies at the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design (UofT) and Clayton Lee, a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist who is the director (artistic) of the Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK.
Living Room Collective’s exhibition is the culmination of four years of collaborative research by Shin Ling and various contributors.
Her research is focused on using living systems to develop sustainable, intelligent and resilient materials and technologies for the future.
By combining ancient processes and modern technologies, it proposes an ‘ecology first’ design principle.
Living Room Collective (upper left clockwise: Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui, Andrea Shin Ling, Clayton Lee), 2025. Photo: Girts Apskalns
The 19th International Architecture Exhibition is open from May 10 to November 23 in Venice, Italy.
For more information on Living Room Collective, visit the Picoplanktonics website (external link) .
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