In Venice, Italy, a new exhibit at the Biennale Architettura 2025 is exploring unconventional approaches to data storage. Gallatin Professors Peder Anker and Mitchell Joachim are presenting “Coding Plants,” which uses kelp as a medium for long-term information preservation.
“The issue of data storage is emerging more and more as a big topic of environmental concern, and we were interested, specifically, in how the storage of knowledge in architecture has changed over time,” said Anker.
Anker explained that while historical methods ranged from scrolls to digital computers, scientists have recently begun investigating organic solutions. The team collaborated with biomedical engineers to embed information into kelp DNA—a process that has been researched since the early 21st century but remains largely experimental.
“Kelp is really important, and needs to be protected as an essential habitat and food for countless marine species, and this was a way to bring attention to that,” Anker said. “You put text into the DNA, and then it’s there and will be there as long as the plant is multiplying. In one gram of DNA, you can store about 215 petabytes of information, and that’s like the Library of Congress under the sea.”
The Coding Plants installation features nine green columns containing glass cylinders with genetically modified kelp. Each sample encodes the phrase “Form follows function.” Audio by Paul Dennis Miller (DJ Spooky) complements the display by repeating letters representing DNA’s four bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).
Scientists converted text into synthetic DNA code before using a gene gun to integrate it into kelp cells. Retrieving stored data requires extracting the plant’s DNA, amplifying it via PCR technology, sequencing it, then decoding it back into readable form—a process suited for archival purposes rather than rapid access.
“The embedding and extraction processes carry almost no environmental cost whatsoever,” said Joachim. “Unlike electronic storage, which has huge environmental costs, the kelp remains unharmed—and the surrounding ocean ecology may even thrive as a result.”
Two Gallatin students contributed research assistance on the project. Ava Hudson worked on creating biomaterial textiles inspired by kelp for use in constructing parts of the installation structure.
“My job was to create a biomaterial textile to adorn the structure,” Hudson said. “They were looking for a textile that would mimic the beauty and ethereality of kelp in the ocean to bring an organic look to the piece, and to reference the central idea of looking to nature’s intelligence for answers to current challenges.”
Hudson developed a blue-green bioplastic from kelp components used throughout Coding Plants’ design.
“Coding Plants is a living manifesto—where art, architecture, and environmentalism converge at the molecular level,” said Joachim. “We’re designing structures that don’t just reflect nature—they are nature, evolving and remembering as ecosystems do.”
