architecture + design

DELICIOUS DATA

Typology: Mixed Use; Hospitality, Institutional, Housing
Location: New York, New York
Course: ARCH 373 - Applied Research Studio
Instructor: Mark Stanley
Semester:  Fall 2024

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Delicious Data is conceived as an architectural system that turns digital media into a tangible, interactive environment, connecting audiences to data in a physical, spatial way. The project emerges from research into online personalities and digital culture, examining information sharing, parasocial interactions, and the selective curation of content that shapes fandoms. This research was expressed physically through mapping exercises that explored a vacant site juxtaposed against the High Line’s corridor of activity in New York. The mixed-use data center uses uses plant-based DNA storage (a real thing), to encode digital information into seeds and other plant matter, creating low-energy, regenerative “data forests.” In doing so, the architecture transforms passive spectatorship and digital interaction into a participatory, site-specific experience that integrates digital memory into the built environment.

The building contains a data harvesting center where digital information is encoded into seeds, alongside a greenhouse in which these seeds are cultivated as either archival “seed records” or encoded food crops. A culinary institute (with associated student housing) supports experimentation and education, while an on-site restaurant prepares and serves encoded food - reframing content consumption as a physical, embodied experience. Below, a forum and archive allow visitors to eat these encoded foods while engaging with the seed collection, access the content they contain, and take encoded seeds with them to further distribute and preserve the data.



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