semaphoric architecture

January 6, 2026

Can a building communicate the mood of a city, of its inhabitants? …

Pleased to be listed in the LHC talent directory:

www.lhc.media/en/directory/zack-saunders

LHC (short for Les Heures Claires) is an independent monthly media site and magazine dedicated to exploring generative artificial intelligence and its impact on culture, creativity, and daily life.

LHC lists artists, creatives and experts who use AI as a tool for expression and knowledge sharing.

Pleased to be included in the latest issue of AI Planet Magazine:

If you’re looking for a magazine that’s as bold as it is beautiful, you need to pick up AI Planet Magazine. This isn’t just another glossy—it’s a quarterly indie publication; a collectible, coffee-table statement piece. Each issue takes on a theme and pushes it to the edge, weaving together fashion, beauty, visionary spaces, gourmet escapes, and even sci-fi and fantasy worlds, all brought to life with cutting-edge AI. The visuals are stunning, the features are provocative, and the stories make you think long after you’ve closed the cover.

www.aiplanetmagazine.com/

IIIIL is more than a gallery, it’s a living archive of how artists are shaping the future of creativity with AI. Whether you're seeking inspiration, scouting new talent, or simply exploring what happens when machines and imagination collide, IIIIL offers a curated and constantly evolving window into this creative frontier.

Pleased to be a selected artist featured on IIIIL

www.iiiil.ai/landing

SYKY is the platform for fashion’s digital creative revolution: a community where members can meet and collaborate, a collective where designers can learn and scale their business, and a platform where collectors can discover innovative design.

View our work at www.syky.com/

Red Dot Winner 2021: Best of the Best

The American Museum of Natural History Butterfly Feeders has been awarded a “Best of the Best” Red Dot Award for Design Concept!

Butterflies are important harbingers of environmental change. The conservatory and feeders offer not just a visceral experience, but also an opportunity to learn about butterflies in their active role to support diverse ecosystems. Visited by millions of children and adults, the vivarium invites people to encounter hundreds of fluttering, variegated butterflies among blooming tropical flowers and lush green vegetation. Biomorphic feeders highlight their fragile life cycle and why it is critical that we protect these precious specimens.

Developed for Terreform ONE, a nonprofit architecture and urban design research-based studio located in NYC.

Credits: Mitchell Joachim, Vivian Kuan, Zack Saunders.

www.red-dot.org/

2021.

Pleased to be on the design team for Terreform ONE’s project, the Bio-Informatic Digestor, chosen for display at this year’s Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

The Bio-Informatic Digester is a machine in the garden that utilizes mealworms to eat styrofoam packaging from e-waste. At the base, the tesseract shaped white cube showcases mealworms devouring community donated styrofoam. It erodes over time to reveal a pre-made graph of future zero-waste projections. Tapping into a new mandate of recycling, this project demonstrates a method of biologically-driven recycling that can contribute to urban biodiversity. Furthermore, the project visualizes the often-unseen beneficial live insect behavior in cities. Manifesting ecological routines into a visible spectacle is a utilitarian mechanism for building awareness and communicating intentions. Instead of burying or hiding urban metabolic infrastructure, reversing its presence is desirable. Foregrounding nature as an aestheticized and functional event in its myriad of forms is an excellent design objective. Giving citizens the capacity to see waste, energy or water systems in flux highlights their value and immediacy.

Mitchell Joachim, Vivian Kuan, Nicholas Gervasi, Theo Dimitrasopoulos, Zack Saunders.

Shenzhen BI-CITY BIENNALE OF URBANISM/ARCHITECTURE. Eyes of the City, Section 6: Artificial Ecologies. Curated by Carlo Ratti.

www.eyesofthecity.net/monarch-sanctuary-bioinformatics/

f.a.s.e. V2 @ Today Art Museum

Experimental Future | Online Exhibition:

The “Experimental Future” was initiated by the Today Art Museum in collaboration with NewArt* to collect works for the most imaginative creators, and the selected outstanding works will have the opportunity to be featured and displayed on the “Future Cloud Museum” online platform.

9.19 - 10.19

www.todayartmuseum.com/

Log 44

CONTENTS

Daisy Ames, “MRL”

Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Appropriation, Subdivision, Abstraction: A Political History of the Urban Grid”

George Baird, “Phenomenology Upside Down: A Response to Log 42”

Fred Bernstein, “Sweet Sixteen Acres”

Ludovico Centis, “An American Temple”

Michelle Chang, “Something Vague”

Cynthia Davidson, “On the Record with Kenneth Frampton”

Luis Fernández-Galiano, “The House of Government”

Douglas Hartig, “Tower Foundations: An Interview with Daniel Libeskind”

Alicia Imperiale, “An ‘Other’ Aesthetic: Moretti’s Parametric Architecture”

Renee Kemp-Rotan, “Injustice Poetic: Monument, Museum, and Metaphor”

Michael Meredith, “44 Low-Resolution Houses”

Rafael Moneo, “Seeking the Significance of Today’s Architecture”

Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto, “It Could Always Be Otherwise”

Zack Saunders, “New Solidarities: #digitaldisobediences”

Christophe Van Gerrewey, “A Weissenhofsiedlung for Amsterdam”

xx voto, “Written After Work: A Letter to ANY 4”

And observations on a Supreme Court decision, houseplants, and MoMA PS1.

Fall 2018

ww.anycorp.com/store/log44

SOILED No. 6: Deathscrapers is now available at Printed Matter, Inc. in NYC!

www.printedmatter.org/catalog/47471

"Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit grant-supported bookstore, artist organization, and arts space presently located at 231 11th Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. Printed Matter focuses on publications made and distributed by artists. (...) Many radical, avant-garde and experimental artists and writers have been linked to Printed Matter, Inc. Figures in its early history were critic and artist Lucy Lippard, artist Sol LeWitt, and Carl Andre among others. Printed Matter served as a sort of support system for avant-garde artists as well as a place of community, oftentimes balancing functions as both a producer of books as well as an exhibition space and center of the downtown arts scene."(1)

"As one of the world’s largest publicly available source for artists' books, Printed Matter is an important voice in a vibrant and expanding field. At the heart of our mission is a longstanding open submission process, inviting artists and independent publishers to submit their books for sale at Printed Matter. We circulate over 32,000 publications annually on behalf of artists and small presses through our non-profit store in Chelsea, our online catalog and other distribution channels. With a commitment to representing and engaging a diverse community of artists, Printed Matter is in many cases one of the few outlets for artist-made publications on the peripheries of mainstream distribution networks."(2)

http://soiledzine.org/

DEATHSCRAPERS summons the architecture that surrounds the dearly departed. Seeking alternately to soften death’s physical and emotional toll or cultivate death’s instrumental potential, the stories of Deathscrapers span all scales of spaces for the dead and the bereaved to examine how living people engage with dead bodies, expired buildings, and comatose cities. While death may be a solemn subject and discussing it openly is often taboo in American culture, this issue of SOILED offers an optimistic and human attitude toward understanding how spatial and architectural issues actively participate in death culture.

IN THIS ISSUE: Zack Saunders re-appropriates dead bodies as surrogate wombs for human gestation.

Soiled Magazine, Issue No. 6: Deathscrapers. Edited by Joseph Altshuler. 2016.

Notes: 1.) Text via >en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_Matter,_Inc<. 2.) Text via >www.printedmatter.org/what-we-do<.

Candela Novembre: il mio Salone del Mobile

"Per la Design Week 2016, l’influencer e business woman avrà un’agenda fitta di impegni. Le abbiamo chiesto i suoi indirizzi must (li trovate nella gallery) e la sua survival guide per l’evento milanese più creativo dell’anno"

Sbodio 32 the Raw Edition, Via Sbodio 32/2 (Ventura Lambrate): una mostra che esplora la nuova frontiera dell'artiganato, grazie all'avvento di tecniche digitali per realizzare opere ibride, che incorporano legno, metallo, cemento e carta in creazioni moda, architettura, arredamento e prodotti di uso quotidiano."

by Alessandra Paudice

http://www.glamour.it/beauty-stories/personaggi/2016/04/11/candela-novembre-il-mio-salone-del-mobile/

SBODIO32 is an alternative exhibition project at Ventura Design District in Lambrate

"SBODIO 32 is a project based exhibition of 800+ sqm in Fuorisalone / Milan Design Week that interacts with the public through a series of events, seminars and workshops. The exhibition is held at the Ventura Design District in Lambrate area; one of the most vibrant areas of Milan's design week. It showcases innovative works produced by a range of contemporary emerging talents within the fields of Industrial Design, Product Design, Fashion Design and Architecture in the era of the design paradox between materiality and Advanced design techniques."

(...)

"Fuorisalone.it is the official guide to Milan Design Week."

www.fuorisalone.it/2016/en

Exhibition Examines the Future of Nutrition

(...)

"Feed Me was a pop-up exhibition that took place during NYCxDesign 2015. The show challeged designers to create artifacts that commented on or visualized future products that related to nutrition and food. The exhibition included work from 22 designers ranging from practical to conceptual. The show was organized by Grouphug, a collective that aims to address global problems faced by society through a design lens."

"F.A.S.E. (Flavor Augmenting Scent Emitters) by Oscar Salguero and Zack Saunders is a wearable scent generator concept that replicates food smells. The project imagines a scenario 70 years in the future where all food is manufactured in homogeneous form and separate devices generate taste and smell."

(...)

by Dave Pinter

www.psfk.com/2015/05/feed-me-at-nycxdesign-2015-exhibition-future-of-nutrition.html

10 Things to See During New York Design Week 2015

A concise guide from Core77's editors to help you navigate this year's events.

(...)

FEED ME at Los Perros Locos:

"What does the future of food look like? This concept is taken up by designers across the country in 20 provocative proposals ranging from market-ready products to visionary concepts. Visitors can expect to find a host of imaginative and pleasantly wacky ideas, including scratch and sniff vitamins, nasal flavor enhancement accessories, and wearable pizza. Sure to be an unconventional respite from NYDW fairs! Opens May 8."

(...)

by Core Jr

www.core77.com/posts/36804/

Final Voting for Jefferson Avenue Pocket Park design Competition

2221 Jefferson Ave., Richmond, VA.

"Designs by Alex Beatty, Zack Saunders, Naomi Siodmok, Bennett Smith, and Scott Wiley have been selected by the judges as finalists for the Jefferson Avenue Pocket Park Design Competition.

All are invited out to vote at the final, public round of judging on Thursday, October 30 from 6:30 – 8:30 PM at the East District Family Resource Center (2405 Jefferson Ave). Come meet the finalists and view their creative designs. All members of the public attending will be given the opportunity to vote for the favorite design. These votes will be added to the panel of judges’ final score to determine the ultimate winner.

The Jefferson Pocket Park competition aims to beautify and transform the Jefferson Avenue corridor into a cherished, environmentally friendly community space focusing on the triangular plot of land at 2221 Jefferson Avenue in Richmond. Better Housing Coalition (BHC) and BHC’s junior board have collaborated with Storefront for Community Design, Friends of Jefferson Park, and the Enrichmond Foundation to support the competition and development of the pocket park.

The goal is to submit a final design to appropriate City departments by Spring 2015 with fundraising to take place soon after, with installation to occur sometime in 2016."

by John M