When we think of robots, we imagine rigid forms, metal surfaces, mechanical movements. Cold, distant machines—unless they’re called WALL-E, and those wide, sweet eyes somehow manage to move us.

Challenging this established idea is Air Giants, a pioneering soft robotics studio, with “The Hothouse Laboratory”, their new project on view from August 7 to September 1, 2025 at Bristol’s Undershed — one of the few spaces in the UK dedicated to immersive and interactive art.

“Hothouse Laboratory is a development of a previous work of ours, adding soundscape, lighting and a story layer. It's a chance for us to see our creatures within a wider constructed world with an invitation to be playfully investigative,” explains Emma Powell, creative director of Air Giants.

These soft, responsive creatures challenge everything we thought we knew about intelligent machines. There are no exposed circuits or hard surfaces—only flexible skin, fluid gestures, and delicate reactions that feel more like an enchanted garden than a tech exhibition.

Air Giants, a studio founded in Bristol by Emma Powell (design), Robert Nixdorf (robotics), and Richard Sewell (pneumatics), is the first in the world to design interactive soft robotics systems on a monumental scale. Their approach overturns the dominant aesthetic of contemporary robotics: where we expect mechanical precision, we find organic elasticity; where we imagine cold efficiency, we encounter warmth and interaction. “We’re used to technology being in the fabric of everyday life, but usually this is screen-based—designed for our eyes and fingertips. We love the idea of interaction which involves more of the body, where touch is so much broader than swiping or clicking,” says Powell.

Emma Powell, Creative Director of Air Giants

The structure of each creature is based on air chambers powered by low-pressure pneumatic systems, capable of moving flexible skin with an elasticity that mimics living processes. The outer technical fabric is hand-cut and sewn, blending traditional craft with computational design in a way that challenges the conventional divide between natural and artificial.

The exhibition design created for Bristol gives context to all of this. The gallery is transformed into a true abandoned laboratory, inhabited by two-meter-tall plant-like organisms that come to life at the touch. A post-apocalyptic scenario quite unlike the one we had imagined.

The robotic imagination of the twentieth century was dominated by the idea of mechanical superiority: robots stronger, faster, more precise than humans. But what if, instead of competing with us, robots invited us into empathy, into play?

“With the contribution of extraordinary talents in set design, lighting and sound, ‘The Hothouse Laboratory’ is an entirely new piece of work,” says Amy Rose, lead curator at Undershed. The installation integrates custom-designed audiovisual components for the first time: sound artist Chu-Li Shewring composed a dynamic ambient score, while architectural lighting by Harriet Wallis turns the space into a responsive, sensitive ecosystem. The light, diffused through backlighting and modulated in color, adapts to the audience’s movements—creating an environment that engages, responds, transforms.

Amy Rose, Lead Curator of Undershed

Air Giants’ collaborations with institutions such as the V&A Museum, the British Library, and the Science Gallery at King’s College, along with their recent Innovate UK Award, reflect a broader cultural urgency. At a time when artificial intelligence and robotics spark fears of human replacement, their work offers a different approach: not competition, but the possibility of building empathy between the human and the artificial.

Opening image: View of earlier Air Giants installation. Courtesy: Air Giants. Photo: Sandra Ebert