Most 3D-printed art installations are static the moment the print head lifts off — a finished object, however novel its fabrication method. Lily Kwong’s EARTHSEED DOME, built in Transamerica Redwood Park in San Francisco, is deliberately the opposite: a living soil structure that keeps building and evolving on-site through July, continuing to change well after the printer itself has stopped running.
Watch: Lily Kwong — The Orchid Show: Natural Heritage (YouTube)
How it’s actually built
The dome merges ancestral building practices with 3D-printing technology, using a living soil medium rather than plastic or resin, with fabrication led by Atelio and WASP 3D. Printing began fully visible to the public during San Francisco Art Week, and the structure has continued building and evolving on-site since — a fabrication process treated as part of the public artwork itself rather than something completed backstage before an opening.
Why “living soil” changes what the object is for
Because the print medium is living soil rather than an inert material, EARTHSEED DOME functions simultaneously as sculpture and as ecological infrastructure — a seed dispersal hub aimed at restoring urban ecology in the park it occupies. Through public workshops and native seed distribution, visitors and commuters are engaged directly as pollinators, turning the park and surrounding downtown into what the project describes as a participatory ecological corridor. That’s a genuinely different relationship between artwork and audience than most public installations attempt: the piece needs the public’s ongoing participation to do the ecological work it’s actually designed for, not just to be looked at.
Part of a bigger initiative worth knowing about
EARTHSEED DOME launched alongside Tara Donovan’s Stratagems — large-scale sculptures built from thousands of recycled CDs, installed in the glass Annex gallery at the nearby Transamerica Pyramid Center, on view through July 31 — as part of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco’s nomadic model, which deliberately foregoes a permanent space in favor of site-specific exhibitions across the city. Seeing both together is a useful contrast in what “technology-driven fabrication” can mean in the same initiative: one piece frozen in a controlled glass gallery, reflecting the changing light outside it; the other still growing, outdoors, meant to be touched and seeded by the people walking through it.
Related Reading
- Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco Announces Nomadic Model to Activate Sites Across the City — ICA SF
- Stratagems by Tara Donovan — Downtown San Francisco
- Tara Donovan’s ‘Stratagems’ Tower Within a San Francisco Architectural Icon — Colossal
- Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) at Transamerica Pyramid Center — Downtown SF