Nøha

| Not Only Human Architecture |

Nøha explores both human and non-human topics, with a central focus on environment-based research.

Nøha is committed to collaboration and cross-disciplinary partnerships, emphasizing research-driven design and novel perspectives.

Nøha translates future visions into SPACE — physical, digital and ethereal.

More info...

-the black box-

Nøha is a collaborative lab that challenges the design process of space-making Nøha is a collaborative lab that challenges the design process of space-making

All Projects

What We Offer

Contact

Layers of the DigitoCene

in collaboration with Lena Tünkers

Zürich Design Biennale 2025, Side By Side
04 - 14 September
Open Call Winner

Today, we excavated another strange artifact from the Digital Epoch layers (circa 2025). A thin, rectangular object whose surface was once reactive to touch. Early analysis suggests it was a primary channel for cognitive extension - a machine humans of the time relied on to store memory, simulate connection, and mediate reality itself. We further encountered cryptic words: memes, selfies, vlogs. Were these rituals? Forms of self-preservation? Methods of connection? Their deeper meaning remains unclear.

A paradox: why did this past society externalize its own capacities into fragile, fading machines? Records indicate that this species surrendered vital functions - perception, memory, even emotion - to these vulnerable devices. Weak traces suggest an existence of constant interaction with these objects, a time when individuals were side-by-side and incomplete without them.

What If?

Layers of the DigitoCene is an art installation that imagines how future archaeologists—human or not—might interpret the technofossils and digital traces of our present. The installation reflects on what survives from our hyperconnected present, how it is interpreted, and what might be lost in translation when memory is no longer human.

In The Making - Basement Experiments

First trials with gypsum — after consultations with local Zürich art studio and a Beijinger interior designer.

Testing the ground. A few soil color samples, informed by conversations with a geologist and a paleontologist.

The Process - In Conversation With Experts

The favorite part of our research process for each project - a series of conversations and correspondences with experts across different fields. This is the core of the Nøha process - collaboration and a radical shift of perspective.

Very soon we will publish a full report on these talks and takeways. Meanwhile here’s a brief summary of our talks.

FUTURE FORESIGHT

The look of the installation is informed by the foresight research conducted by the project co-author Lena Tünkers (futurist & curator). The research scans for current trends in our connection with the digital and sets them into different scenarios with emerging signals of change and underlying drivers in our present society. Will humanity keep dominating life on earth or we will go down? Will technology crash to its limits or will it make the unimaginable possible?

GEOLOGY & PALAEONTOLOGY

We spoke to Prof. Jan Zalasiewicz, a British-Polish geologist and palaeontologist, and an emeritus professor at the University of Leicester and his colleaugue Prof. Sarah Gabbott - a palaeontologist, known for her research on decomposition and fossilization. We discovered that their book ‘Discarded. How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate Legacy‘, touching upon links between past, present and future, and the fossilization of architecture and of e-waste among its themes, has so many overlaps with our installation theme.

More about the book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/discarded-9780192869333?cc=gb&lang=en&
The most important takeaway was the difference in how we perceive time. What felt like a long horizon to us as architects —100 years—is a blink in their disciplines, which deal in million-year timespans. They shared insights into material degradation—how glass turns opaque, metals leach, plastics endure—and supported our visual research with microscopic imagery and structural data.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Then we contacted Dr. Ruben Davtyan, Research Assistant at the State Office for Heritage Preservation and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. We spoke about the human memory and not taking current technologies for granted - many formats that we used just 5-10 years ago have already become totally obsolete. He also introduced the idea of “digital trenches” — future archaeological digs that will have to navigate vast, abundant digital data alongside physical remains.

We also tried to speculate what would an archaeological site of the future look like - so unlikely it will have the same setup of today.

Find out more about Dr Ruben’s work here: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0464-161X

ASTROPHYSICS

Next we spoke to Prof. Avi Loeb - the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020).

We explored the possibility of interstellar archaeology—a future in which Earth is studied from afar, as a failed civilization or a case study in planetary resilience. A future historian of the Milky Way, who is collecting statistics of how civilizations succeed or destroy themselves... Who knows in which column will our civilization be listed...

Read Prof Loeb’s essays on Medium: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/

More yet to come!

HOME NEXT

noharch@outlook.com