Tomás Saraceno's biospheres float into Berlin

The phrase 'living in a bubble' has been applied to anyone and everyone from touring rock stars to politicians; sports stars to members of royal families. It's a convenient, ready-made phrase to describe any life taken care of from dawn to dusk, evoking both the safety of the womb and the more negative aspects of life lived shut off from society. Now, a new show from Argentine architectural artist Tomás Saraceno takes the concept a few steps further. Cloud Cities, inspired by structures found in nature, comprises giant bubbles suspended by wires with the strength and flexibility of spider webs which visitors not only admire from below, but climb into and experience the disorientating effects of from the inside.

Tomás Saraceno, Cloud Cities

Saraceno is recognised for his fantastic architectural proposals, pneumatic sculptures and environmentally-minded ideas. His work expands conventional architecture and art into the world of scientific research and has led him to collaborate with scientists at NASA as well as chemists, botanists and engineers. Like many pioneering architects and artists before - including fellow dome builder Buckminster Fuller, the original performance artist Yves Klein and avant-garde architecture firm Antfarm - he is envisioning alternate ways of interacting with the world around him.

Tomás Saraceno, Cloud Cities at London's Hayward Gallery in 2008 (left) and at Copenhagen's Installationsansicht Statens Museum for Kunst in 2009 (right)

Twenty of Saraceno's bubble-like biosphere structures are on show at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin until January 15, 2012 where he hopes they will raise questions about the social and political conditions in which we live and hopefully highlight our potential to change them. "Work on this structure tries to contest political, social, cultural and military restrictions that are accepted today, in an effort to re-establish new concepts of synergy," he says.

Tomás Saraceno, Cloud Cities at the Hamburger Bahnhof