Metabolic Materials
Architecture today is fundamentally inert and unresponsive to the changing environment. How do we go by changing architecture into dynamic, interactive systems that can adapt to the environment?
Metabolic materials provide adaptability and integration into the environment. They are a technology that uses chemistry as its information processing system and act as an interface between artificial structures and natural systems. Their main characteristic is that they possess the living property of metabolism (set of chemical interactions that transform one group of substances into another with the absorption or production of energy. Although they can grow and divide, they are NOT, themselves, living; they don’t have DNA. They also need water to participate in the chemical processes. One example of agents that are capable of generating metabolic materials are protocells. Protocells are dynamic oil in water droplets that are chemically programmable and exhibit some of the properties of living systems. They are able to move around, sense and modify their environment, and even communicate with one another.
Image of protocells. Protocells can process carbon dioxide through a process called carbon fixation. In this process, protocells can convert inorganic carbon into organic compounds, and use these compounds for the creation of skins and solids.
Architectural Properties of Protocells: o Shedding skins o Altering the chemistry of an environment through their “waste products� o
Precipitation of solids
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Light sensitivity
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Responsiveness to vibration