Inspired by Donna Haraway’s book “Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene”, The Institute for Sympoiesis is an interdisciplinary research organisation with a residency program which receives annually professionals from fields such as art, architecture, natural and social sciences from all over the world to research, collaborate and experiment new forms of responding to the challenges posed by the Anthropocene - the current geological epoch where human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment - and foster new forms of symbiotic relationships and “response-ability” through multispecies collaboration and co-habitation.

At the end of each residency program, there are exhibitions and lectures open to the public to spread the knowledge obtained through the research and artistic projects during the year.

The site is located in the London Borough of Harrow, adjacent to the University of Westminster’s campus to the west, Northwick Park Hospital to the South and Northwick Park to the East. The proximity of the site to both the hospital and the university provides opportunities for collaboration with the Institute, in the fields of science and art. Moreover, the animal and plant species that inhabit Northwick Park can be part of sympoietic collaboration projects.

The main inspiration for the typology of the building came from an image of the Mixotricha paradoxa, a poster organism for sympoiesis. It is a single celled organism that is comprised of five symbiotic entities and lives in a symbiotic relationship with the Australian termite species. Imagined as a spatial diagram, it provided clues as to what the interior layout of the building could look like.

A layered facade with inner and outer rows of columns acts as a sheltering “membrane”, akin to a living organism. This “in-between” space houses circulation and more permanent infrastructures, while the interior of the building consists of a vast, open-plan area, divided by curtains and ephemeral partitions to allow for maximum flexibility of uses and activities.