Pepeyoca: Reconsidering the bioreactor as a bioluminescent living wall for human-bacterial co-inhabitation

This paper contributes to the search for novel design principles for an
interspecies architecture. Departing from the design and realisation of the installation ‘Pepeyoca – light from within’: a bio-digitally crafted living wall, we examine emerging design strategies that can entangle human and more-than-human concerns at multiple scales and across distinct life forms. By focusing on bioluminescent bacteria as a living light source and heather as a soil remediator and oxygen producer, the paper presents novel design strategies for circular interdependency in which multiple species directly support and provide foundational conditions for one another. We describe and discuss novel design and fabrication drivers that reject anthropocentric notions of functionalisation instead bringing the bioreactor out of the lab and into a shared living arena. This is done across multiple steps, ideating the role and performance of an interspecies architecture, searching for interdependencies and developing care protocols to steer their balance.