Metabolic Bodying — A Conversation about Metabolic Homes with Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou
INTERVIEWEES: Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou
INTERVIEWER: Valerio Franzone
MAGAZINE: PIN-UP
PUBLISHED:
November 19, 2025>>> PIN–UP >>>
Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti MarkopoulouIn the 1960s, Japan’s Metabolist movement imagined buildings and cities as living organisms capable of growth, transformation, and renewal. Today, Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou revisit the idea of metabolism, but instead of treating it as a metaphor for architecture, they explore it as a literal and transscalar exchange between architecture and the environment. Kallipoliti, director of the Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University GSAPP and principal of the research think tank ANAcycle, and Markopoulou, the Academic Director of the IAAC – Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and co-founder of the art/tech gallery StudioP52, intertwine different forms of architectural practices, comprising research, design, curatorial, editorial, and pedagogical work. They first presented the Metabolic Home as a research framework when they co-curated the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale (EDIBLE; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism), where they invited architects, scientists, and designers to create 1:1 living prototypes for a different domestic space and metabolic function. They later developed this work further at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, designing and presenting a complete home model at 1:5 scale with integrated metabolic flows. In May, Actar published Building Metabolism: Recipes for Food and Resource Cycles (Actar Publishers, 2025), the book they co-edited. Structured as domestic spaces, it serves as a speculative and pedagogical tool that deepens the research they initiated in Tallinn. Using the home and domesticity as a starting point, they explore how metabolism can actively shape architecture, not just serve as a device for its form. In this conversation, Kallipoliti and Markopoulou explore how digestion, fermentation, composting, and other interactions between natural and artificial bodies can inform new architectural responses to today’s environmental and social challenges.