3 minute read
The future of biological architecture
A home Renovation Guide
BY ANNABELLE MATHERS, CIVIL ENGINEERING, 2022 DESIGN BY YECHAN YANG, PSYCHOLOGY, 2022
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Arecent attraction has formed around the televised renovation of houses, centering on the idea that people must “bring life” back into outdated structures. What if there was a different way to attribute a lifelike quality to architecture that would actively improve the condition of those very inhabitants? The unlikely union of architecture and synthetic biology uses nature’s microscopic world to supplement the static materials of an artificial world. Driven by a global need for natural resources, eco-friendly efficiency, and structural resiliency, architects and scientists are collaboratively developing buildings that contain self-sustaining, purifying, and protective mechanisms.
Biologically-inspired architecture has at least two main facets that are crucially linked: mimicry of nature through manmade materials, and the actual harnessing of living organisms within construction materials. In particular, recent advances in synthetic technology have given way to burgeoning studies on bacteria-based materials, electronic “eSkin,” and microbial reactor systems. Each of these technologies seeks to respectively apply microscopic mechanisms to the macroscopic scale of foundations, exteriors, and interiors of responsive architecture.
Bio-Concrete Already existent in the commercial market, bio-concrete is a combination of bacteria and biofilm manipulations that cause biomineralization—a process where bacteria respond to environmental changes by producing mineral crystals. Carefully cultured biofilms foster bacteria in a protective environment, optimizing inter-bacterial communication. Such biofilms yield an extracellular matrix or a conglomeration of nucleic acids, proteins and exopolysaccharides. Manipulation of these organic matrices, with which the bacteria interact, creates theoretically limitless ways to influence the behavior of bacteria.
Thus, synthetically-induced biomineralization becomes relevant. When combined with pre-existing nutrients in concrete, and faced with eventual nutrient depletion from concrete erosion, bacteria can be compelled to transform nearby carbon dioxide and calcium into a solid, calciumcarbonate precipitate. In other words, foundational cracks can be self-healed by precipitous reactions, while carbon dioxide concentrations in the air can be decreased. The high variability of bacterial behavior enables buildings to essentially acquire an internal metabolism that responds dynamically to stress.
eSkin When addressing environmental stress, however, the most intimate inspiration for researchers is the human response system itself. Consequently, Jenny Sabin of Cornell University is part of an effort to develop eSkin, a glass-encased mimicry of human cellular responses designed for the surfaces of buildings. Ideally, building exteriors, strategically layered with a combination of sensors and nanoparticles (e.g. silica), will respond efficiently to fluctuations in temperature and solar energy.
In creating these nanosystems, researchers use additional sensors and imagers to track how human smooth muscle cells manipulate their own characteristics and environment when stimulated. Polarity, opacity, organization, and color are a few of the cellular manipulations, which are then behaviorally mimicked by nanoparticles. Stimuli translate to specific voltages passed along the eSkin, signaling the nanoparticles to react accordingly. These compact nanosystems harbor a potential substitute for traditionally protective glazes on glass building exteriors. As with bacteria, the variability of adaptive nanoparticle behavior enables more dynamic and resilient architecture, with respect to changes in climate and solar energy, than a static glaze material.
Bioreactors Focusing more on interior architecture, aquarium-esque walls made of microbial systems may one day metabolically maintain household conditions. Rachel Armstrong of Newcastle University, along with many other key experts, is part of Living Architecture, a group that prototypes these systems. Three types of bioreactors, separated by water and semi-permeable membranes, constitute a wall: bacterial, algal, and synthetic. Bacteria collectively act as an anaerobic fuel cell yielding electricity and clean water. Algal photosynthesis produces biomass, known as organic fuel commonly harnessed for electricity, to also fertilize the self-sustaining system.
With great anticipation of the material possibilities, experts continue to genetically modify microbial processors in the third bioreactor, which produces plant-based materials and biomass for fuel. Nutrients in the circulating grey water, or home appliance-used water, promote overall microbial growth. Evidently, an integral function to the reactors is energyefficiency and water treatment, but a more philosophical view emphasizes nature as a dynamic partner in people’s lives. Bioreactors could more intuitively and specifically address constant needs, especially if linked with additional sensors, like eSkin. These independent systems could, in fact, allow people to become more self-sufficient, within the comfort of their own home.
It is this idea, of independent flexibility, that belongs to both scientific and artistic design. Perhaps, the renovation race to develop improved, artificial building systems is flawed in its basic premise; it does not consider the natural mechanisms that lay just outside the front door. Bio-concrete, eSkin and bioreactors may someday be the architectural liaisons between people and a sustainable future.