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Exhibition, Heat Death
Savage Garden, Carlton
2023





Heat Death is a scaled-down prototype of Gas Stack, our shortlisted 2021 proposal for the NGV Architecture Commission. Built in the backyard of Savage Garden, an informal gallery established within a Carlton North rental, it takes the form of a small, mobile anaerobic digester.

Anaerobic digesters function like an artificial stomach. Within their sealed chambers, organic waste, such as food scraps or manure, is broken down by microbes in the absence of oxygen, producing biogas (a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide) and a nutrient-rich digestate. This biogas can be used for cooking, heating, or generating electricity, transforming what would otherwise decompose in landfill and be released into the atmosphere into a usable source of energy. Constructed from repurposed drums, plumbing fittings, and tubing, the system operates as a living assemblage: part domestic appliance, part infrastructural experiment.




DIY anaerobic digestors on a farm in Johannesburg, 1956




A hole was cut through the gallery wall to supply biogas to a small burner installed in the laneway, used to cook food during the opening BBQ. This simple modification connected the digester directly to the event, turning the gallery wall into a practical link between the process of waste conversion and its use as energy.








Originally conceived for the NGV’s Grollo Equiset Garden, where it was deemed “too risky,” the project found its first life instead within the informal setting of Savage Garden. Here, architecture is tested as a functioning object, an experiment in generating, storing, and using energy from waste.



 
Simulaa is an architecture practice based in Naarm, dedicated to both built commissions and research projects. The work of the practice is defined by considered analysis and a research-based approach that prioritises a time-based design thinking that recognises architecture’s inherent entanglement with social, economic, aesthetic, political, and environmental concerns. The practice has a particular interest in reconciling architecture’s relationship with technology, energy, waste, and ecology through critical experimentation. As architects and design professionals we must demonstrate the social and economic advantages of new and better ways of thinking about the built environment. It is critical we re-evaluate and reset our priorities on a more empathetic and resilient path. 
Simulaa is an architecture practice based in Naarm, dedicated to both built commissions and research projects. The work of the practice is defined by considered analysis and a research-based approach that prioritises a time-based design thinking that recognises architecture’s inherent entanglement with social, economic, aesthetic, political, and environmental concerns. The practice has a particular interest in reconciling architecture’s relationship with technology, energy, waste, and ecology through critical experimentation. As architects and design professionals we must demonstrate the social and economic advantages of new and better ways of thinking about the built environment. It is critical we re-evaluate and reset our priorities on a more empathetic and resilient path.