A Guided Tour of The Metabolic Home by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou at the Venice Biennale

In this immersive pavilion tour, Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou introduce The Metabolic Home: New Forms of Cohabitation and Decarbonization in the Dense City, a prototype dwelling that reimagines domestic life as a metabolic system. Each room of the house demonstrates how human and non-human agents—plants, microbes, and materials—co-produce the environment through cycles of exchange. From salt-brick bedrooms and biomass-powered kitchens to bathrooms that transform waste into energy and hydroponic gardens that feed back into the home, the installation proposes a radical circular model of habitation. The project blurs the boundaries between architecture, biology, and technology, asking what it means to live with and through metabolic processes in a decarbonized city.