Sentient City Competition Proposal for the Architectural League of New York
Collaboration with Raoul Rickenberg / MAPstudios, NYC

The proposal deploys LCD temperature sensitive artificial "weeds" that propagate at the interstices of the urban and social conditions of Manhattan. Weeds generate insight into the codes by which selected boroughs of New York operate, and grow in a paradoxically purposeless, weed-like manner. To this end, Weeds are a family of simple devices that embody the basic functionality a lineage of wild plant-life uses as it colonizes niches. More interesting than mimicry of this fundamental biological process, however, Weeds leverage existing urban technologies that their natural counterparts have yet to master. Simple, dumb, and biodegradable, they are tuned to resonate with specific dynamics that already occur in Manhattan as they collect and feed off excessive temperature leaks in the city.