Exhibition
How does architecture relate to the world of bacteria? The exhibition We The Bacteria advocates an approach to architecture that embraces microbes rather than fighting them.
Architecture has contributed both to the destruction and the preservation of bacteria. Many modern-day diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases, allergies, autism, Alzheimer’s and depression, are linked to a loss of microbial diversity.
We The Bacteria highlights the important role of architecture in this narrative. Curators Beatriz Colomina (Architectural Historian and Professor, Princeton University) and Mark Wigley (Professor of Architecture, Columbia University) explore the ‘diseases of the built environment’, which are inextricably linked to the health of the planet and the state of the biosphere. The exhibition advocates a different view of humanity: as a mobile ecosystem that embraces the world of bacteria. We The Bacteria holds a mirror up to us all.
Get to know your microbes and follow the journey they have taken, from deep within the Earth to outer space, and from 4.2 billion years ago to the present day. Discover recent research by scientists and architects into an alternative history of architecture, told from the perspective of bacteria.
Beatriz Colomina is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of Architecture, Director of the PhD Program at the School of Architecture, and Founding Director of the interdisciplinary Media and Modernity Program at Princeton University.
Her recent publications include Sick Architecture (MIT Press, 2025) and We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture (with Mark Wigley; Lars Müller, 2025).
Recent exhibitions she co-curated with Mark Wigley include We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture at the 24th Triennale di Milano, Milan (2025), and The Other Side of the Hill at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Mark Wigley is Professor of Architecture and Dean Emeritus of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University. He is a historian, theorist, and critic who explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology.
His latest publications are We the Bacteria – Notes Toward Biotic Architecture (with Beatriz Colomina; Lars Müller, 2025), Konrad Wachsmann’s Television: Post-Architectural Transmissions (Sternberg Press, 2020), Passing Through Architecture: The 10 Years of Gordon Matta-Clark (Power Station of Art, 2019); and Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design (with Beatriz Colomina; Lars Müller, 2016).
30.09.2026 - 31.01.2027
opening on 29.09.2026 at 8p.m., book your ticket(s)
DE SINGEL, Expo Hall and surroundings
Desguinlei 25
2018 Antwerp, Belgium
From Wednesday to Sunday, from 2 m. to 7 m. and during evening performances until 10 p.m.
€5 (tickets online and in front of the expo hall)
€0 (students, age -19), unemployed, ICOM, tickets in front of the expo hall)
Your ticket also gives access to the expo Unfolding the Archives #10 - Ways of Seeing
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley
GRACE
An exhibition by Triennale Milano, presented by the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi) and DE SINGEL
Government of Flanders
