Platform / Layered Habitat for Cockroaches

Inspired by the vertical hierarchy of the film The Platform (2019), this project proposes a dwelling structure for cockroaches that functions as a slow-acting elimination system. The 3D-printed PETG structure adopts a layered spatial logic where bait—a mixture of mashed potato and boric acid—is placed at the core. Attracted by scent, cockroaches enter voluntarily, moving through internal levels until they are absorbed into an irreversible system.

The work avoids explicit violence, operating instead through spatial organization. The cockroaches are not forcibly trapped but are enveloped by a structure that appears inhabitable yet remains fundamentally terminal. Elimination becomes a delayed outcome produced by the system's own efficiency. The semi-transparency of the material positions the viewer in a state of detached awareness, sensing the internal process without intervening. By transforming a domestic device into a spatial metaphor, the work critiques rational, institutional violence. It questions how design—under the guise of order and care—can replicate mechanisms of structural suffocation, making harm a quietly normalized byproduct of systemic efficiency.