Ecotopian Toolkit Workshop: e+i Studio

Come explore e+i Studio's Multispecies Totem: a biomaterial robotically 3D printed structure made up of stackable modules designed to support avian life. Serving as feeders, planters and nesting pods, the structure and accompanying information on avian life hope to spark interest and imagination for participants to design their own multispecies totem assembly!

Stackable mini 3D printed components will be available for participants to let their imagination guide them to ways that humans can support nonhuman life within human-made spaces, be it a backyard, garden, terrace, or window ledge.

Visitors can use the mini 3D-printed modules to temporarily create their own multispecies totem arrangement or interactive “living scenario” for how the modules could be arranged/ stacked/ assembled in a backyard, balcony, or terrace that visitors have access to. Once participants are finished, the task is to draw the assembly imagining the multispecies visitors that might inhabit it, or use some of the stickers we provide of species present in the arboretum. We will photograph this and email or text it to participants, who can take the drawing home with them!

**Please note there is a fee to enter the Morris Arboretum + Gardens. PennCard holders can enter the gardens for free. For more information about admissions pricing visit: https://www.morrisarboretum.org/visit/hours-pricing

e+i studio is an architecture and design practice based in New York City, founded by partners Eva Perez de Vega and Ian Gordon. The work of e+i examines the built environment’s capacity to contribute affirmatively to human well-being while also taking nonhuman life into account. 

Increasingly engaged in critically assessing architecture in the context of the global climate crisis, e+i advocates for rethinking the human-centric quality of architecture towards a multi-species approach, by choreographing spaces and environments that promote interaction, aesthetic innovation, and ecological empathy. As an exploration of these overlaps, e+i exhibited ‘Project Speciation’ at the Venice Biennale in 2021. 

The work of e+i has recently received a grant from the Architectural League of New York to explore multispecies interventions and has received past support from the Architectural League, the New York Foundation For the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Manhattan Council Art Fund, Architecture For Humanity and Emerging New York Architects, among others. It has been exhibited in New York at the AIA Center for Architecture, Van Alen Institute, Max Protech, RIVAA art gallery, Parsons New School For Design, as well as internationally at the Milan Design Fair, Venice, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, and Seoul.

This year, PPEH, in collaboration with the Morris Arboretum & Gardens, presents Ecotopian Tools for Multispecies Flourishing. These tools are designed to support diverse, multi-species communities, including humans, amidst the crisis of extinction fueled by habitat loss, climate change, and other Anthropocene woes.

This ongoing initiative to craft and share ecotopian tools across the Delaware Valley takes a utopian approach to ecological crisis as a way to confront feelings of helplessness and apathy that often arise in the face of global warming