Cricket Reactor by Third Millennium Farming
Architects excel at shaping human habitats, but what if architects were tasked with also designing accommodations for other species" What would these homes look like, and what would their designs say about our relationship to the natural world"
Opening this Friday and on exhibition through April 24, the Gladstone Hotel?s Grow Op is an exhibition of art, ecology and design that cultivates curiosity across a broad range of disciplines. Grow Op celebrates projects that help us make sense of our rapidly changing landscapes, identify nature?s persistence within our cultural environments, and recognize how culture frames our very ideas of nature.
Detail of the cartridge and access wall to the Cricket Reactor. A number of projects in this year?s exhibition explore this expanded idea of habitat. One is a household farm for crickets; another is a hydroponic garden. Both blur the boundaries between culture and nature with a language that suggests new metaphors for understanding a present that many scientists are calling the Anthropocene era.
Crickets feeding in the installation.
Cricket Reactor by Third Millennium Farming is an alternative approach to urban agriculture where city bio-wastes are used to farm algae and fungi, which are in turn fed to insects. In turn, the crickets are processed into an edible flour?a low carbon footprint form of protein.
Jakub Dzamba, a University of Toronto graduate and Ph.D. candidate designed the...