Tomás Saraceno

Visionary artist Tomás Saraceno creates inflatable and airborne biospheres with the morphology of soap bubbles, spider webs, neural networks, or cloud formations, which are speculative models for alternate ways of living.

Tomás Saraceno is the inaugural Visiting Artist at MIT’s new Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). An artist trained as an architect, Saraceno deploys theoretical frameworks and insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics and materials science. His residency at MIT focuses on advancing new work for the ongoing Cloud Cities series. On Space Time Foam, a project created for HangarBicocca in Milan, Italy, is a multi-layered habitat of membranes suspended 24 meters above the ground that is inspired by cosmology and life sciences. Each level has a different climate and air pressure and will react to the movement of visitors through it. In a later iteration, the work will become a floating biosphere above the Maldives Islands that is made habitable with solar panels and desalinated water.

Domus: Where is Everybody?
Wired: Milan Art Installation Has Visitors Walking on Air
Huffington Post: ‘On Space Time Foam’ Is An Enormous Suspended Trampoline
Bruno Latour: Some Experiments in Art and Politics
MIT Campus News: All That is Solid Melts Into Air

Tomás Saraceno’s biography notes that he “was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina; lives and works between and beyond the planet earth.” Cloud City was installed on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Saraceno has recently exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Walker Art Center and the 2009 Venice Biennale. He has held residencies at the Atelier Calder in France and participated in the NASA International Space Studies Program. Learn more about Tomás Saraceno.

Watch Saraceno’s Lecture

Moving Beyond Materiality
MIT Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno discussed the speculative context and experimental materials of his Cloud Cities with Nader Tehrani and Antón García-Abril on Thursday, November 15, 2012.

Nader Tehrani, Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT, Principal and Founder of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration. Learn more about Nader Tehrani.

Antón García-Abril is Professor of Architecture at MIT and founder of ENSAMBLE STUDIO, a firm committed to architectural application of conceptual and structural experimentation. Learn more about Antón García-Abril.

Co-presented by the Department of Architecture.

Tomás Saraceno’s residency is made possible by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. The arts at MIT are rooted in experimentation, risk-taking and imaginative problem-solving.