PRESS RELEASE

SPIKA: Living Architecture Re-Imagines Human-Nature Relationship at the 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition

Milan, Italy – May 13, 2025 – As part of the 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition titled Inequalities, SPIKA is a groundbreaking six-meter installation conceived and designed by Rachel Armstrong functioning as both fortress and ecosystem. Part of the We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture exhibition curated by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, SPIKA reimagines architecture as an active participant in ecological cycles rather than a passive enclosure.

A Constructed and Living Prototype

SPIKA challenges traditional distinctions between the built environment and natural systems with its bold, barbed design. At its heart lies a living infrastructure, developed and constructed by a six-partner European consortium coordinated by Rachel Armstrong and KU Leuven and called Mi-Hy (Microbial Hydroponics). The Mi-Hy project uses microbial fuel cells to transform waste into energy, nutrients, and plant factors through an innovative relationship with hydroponic plant roots. Mi-Hy’s circularity challenges industrial agriculture’s linear extraction process with an alternative: here, microbes can fix nitrogen that is easy for plants to use, while root exudates recruit microbial consortia that stabilize the acidity of the solution and defend against pathogens.

“SPIKA is not a monument to sustainability but a working prototype,” explains project coordinator and lead Rachel Armstrong. “It’s an invitation to change our expectations from control to collaboration, from extraction to regeneration.”

An Architecture with a Narrative

More than a prototype, SPIKA comes with its own embedded narrative. Visitors will not only meet SPIKA’s physical structure, but also the stories embedded in its materials, systems, and forms: From microbial fuel cells powering LEDs, across advanced sensors showing bioelectrical spikes, to bioreceptive panels inviting colonisation by local organisms.
SPIKA is also accompanied by a multi-part narrative and a dedicated online presence, to which everyone but especially visitors who cannot join on site are warmly welcomed. The installation challenges conventional notions of cleanliness, waste, and human dominance. Its communities work at nature’s pace, more precisely at the speed of microbial metabolism, which drives plant growth and biodiversity.

Innovation in the Face of Climate Change

The installation and project are part of the European Innovation Council’s CO₂ and Nitrogen Management and Valorisation Portfolio – a curation of eight breakthrough projects and technologies aimed at restoring the balance of carbon and nitrogen in land and water systems. SPIKA proposes a regenerative architectural model capable of contributing to circular resource flows and ecological resilience. More than a structure, it is also a web of relationships where humans, microbes, plants, and technologies meet.
Join us. Reimagine cities where biodiversity thrives, where wilderness is respected, and where every action—yours included—helps rewrite the terms of our coexistence.