Opening
On 29 September, the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi) and DE SINGEL will open the exhibition We the Bacteria. Following a successful presentation at the 24th Triennale di Milano, the exhibition arrives in Antwerp this autumn. During the festive opening evening, co-curators Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley will immerse you in an alternative history of architecture, centred on a provocative question: what if we embraced microbes instead of fighting them?
From contemporary health challenges to the vulnerabilities of the built environment, from deep beneath the Earth to far into outer space, and from billions of years ago to the present day. During the opening evening, co-curator Mark Wigley will guide you through the monumental narrative of this exhibition.
The exhibition We the Bacteria kicks off with a festive event in the Red Hall of DE SINGEL. Afterwards, join us for a reception in the bar and take the opportunity to explore the exhibition for yourself.
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.
Opening Programme
8:00 PM – Welcome by Dennis Pohl, Director of the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi)
8:10 PM – Lecture The Bacterial Clients of Architecture by Mark Wigley, co-curator of the exhibition
8:55 PM – Q&A with Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley
9:15 PM – Reception and exhibition visit
(The programme in the Red Hall will be conducted in English.)
Architecture is infused with countless microbes occupying every space, surface, duct, layer, fitting, and material. Each human inhabitant contributes species of microbes to this community and receives species from it. To inhabit a room is to inhabit this pulsating collective microbial space and to be inhabited by it. The cities and expanded networks of the built environment are actually imprinted inside our gut.
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley offer an alternative history of 10,000 years of architecture from the point of view of microbes. It is the history of dramatic pulsations as pathogenic microbes take shelter in built spaces alongside humans—repeatedly decimating populations.
As the built environment evolves in response to devastating epidemics and pandemics, the microbes evolve too in a continuous dance, generating new diseases and variations of ancient ones. Colomina and Wigley call for a paradigm-shift, a transformation of the very concept of shelter.
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).
29.09.2026 at 20:00h
Red Hall
DE SINGEL, Antwerp
The programme in the Red Hall will be conducted in English.
Free admission. Prior online registration required.
Visit the exhibition free of charge from 7:00 PM onwards (no ticket required).
30.09.2026 - 31.01.2027
DE SINGEL
Desguinlei 25
2018 Antwerp
Beatriz Colomina en Mark Wigley
GRACE
An exhibition by Triennale Milano, presented by the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi) and DE SINGEL.
Government of Flanders
