living architecture > rachel armstrong > the bartlett school of architecture

MArch lecture

Living ArchitectureRachel Armstrong

TEDGlobal Fellow, Teaching Fellow, AVATAR groupThe Bartlett School of Architecture

[email protected]

Living Cities

• “Historically, the city has been seen as either mechanistic or biological in its order”

Neil Spiller, Digital Dreams

Urban Paleontology

Ming Tang, Dihua Yang, 2008

Biological Formalism

• Use of biological metaphor• Common conceptual framework• Doctrine that formal structure rather than

content is what should be represented • Shared methodological tools• the practice of scrupulous adherence to

prescribed or external forms• Top-down process

Molecular House, Mohammed Alkayer

Growing Architecture

City as An Organism

• “... Like any organism [a city] has a circulatory system in its streets, railroads and rivers, a brain in its universities and planning offices, a digestive system in its food distribution and sewage lines, muscles in its industrial centres and any city worthy of the name has an erogenous zone ...”

Matthew Dumont, Arthropods

MEtreePOLIS, Matthias Hollwich

MEtreePOLIS, Matthias Hollwich

Inertia of Real Cities

• The city is not an organism – it is made of inert materials

• The built environment consists of unrelated objects that are secondarily connected to each other to create the urban landscape

• Apparent vitality conferred by the behaviour of living systems within the built environment

Brazil, Terry Gilliam

Contemporary Materials

• Materials of built environment are not dynamic, they are simple, including the current generation of ‘smart’ materials

• Limited meaningful embodied integration of different media

• Currently parallel architectural spaces are accessed by cross-referral, analogy, metaphor & interfaced via human ‘experience’

Twelve Monkeys, Terry Gilliam

Connecting Artifice & Nature

• Requires a fundamental change in the organization model that describes the relationship between building materials and the environment

Hylazoic Soil, Philip Beesley

Living Architecture

• New model of sustainable architectural practice that directly connects the built environment to nature

• The unit of Living Architecture is the Architectural protocell

Architectural Protocell

• A protocell is a primordial atomic globule, connected to the environment through the languages of physics and chemistry. Uniquely, protocell technology possesses material complexity, and is capable of self-organisation


• Protocells can be made of pre-existing biological materials such as protoplasm – for example, the protoplasm of the green algae Bryopsis and slime mould – or can be fabricated from scratch using organic and inorganic chemicals


• This gives rise to the possibility of Protocell Architecture, as protocell units work together to generate their output

Manifestofor protocell architecture: against biological formalism

• We want to change the world with almost nothing.

• It is possible to generate complex materials and architectures through harnessing the fundamental energetics of matter. In other words, doing more with less


• What we call protocell architecture is, at root, a piece of Dadaist and Surrealist research, in which all the lofty questions have become involved

• The novel self-assembling material systems that arise from protocell architectural practice make no reference to, nor attempt to mimic bio-logic. As such, protocell architecture is an alien to the natural world, yet speaks the same fundamental languages of chemistry and physics. The results of these conversations and interactions constitute a parallel biology and second biogenesis whose aesthetics are described by Surrealist agendas


• Architecture is dead, long live architecture• Protocells constitute a disruptive technology for

architectural practice since they are capable of reaching a transition point when evolution emerges within the system, the outcome of which is unpredictable and therefore offer novel and surprising ways of constructing architecture that will succeed and replace conventional technologies


• Protocell architecture swallows contrast and all contradictions including the grotesquery and illogicality of life

• Protocell technology is at the beginning of an evolutionary pathway that is connected to and dependent on the environmental conditions around it. The responsiveness of protocells to stimuli, means they can be regarded as computing units. Consequently, protocells do not seek to generate idealized architectural forms but reflect and interpret the full spectrum of the processes they encounter in the real world


• What is generally termed life is really a frothy nothing that merely connects

• Protocell technology offers an opportunity for architects to engage with the evolutionary process itself. Unlike natural biological systems that evolve randomly according to Darwinian evolution, protocell technology allows deliberate and specific interventions throughout the entire course of its coming into being. By moving and metabolizing, protocells may form the basis for a synthetic surface ecology. These interventions are the basis of what we call protocell architecture


• We do not wish to imitate nature, we do not wish to reproduce nature, we want to produce architecture in the way a plant produces its fruit. We do not want to depict, we want to produce directly, not indirectly, since there is no trace of abstraction. We call it Protocell Architecture

• Protocell Architecture embodies the principles of emergence, bottom-up construction techniques and self-assembly. It is equipped with design ‘handles’ that enable the architect to persuade rather than dominate the outcome of the system through physical communication. As such, these systems are unknowable, surprising and anarchic.


• We want to collage effective biological machinery that composes itself according to the drivers of design

• Protocell Architecture is chemically programmable and operates in keeping with the organizing principles of physics and chemistry


• We want over and over again, movement and connection; we see peace only in dynamism

• Protocell Architecture gathers its energy from the tension that resides at an interface between two media such as oil and water, which causes movement, disruption and change. Protocell Architecture resists the equilibrium since this constitutes death


• The head is round, so thoughts can revolve. The head of architecture is green, robust, synthesized and exists everywhere simultaneously, whether it is large or very, very small

• Protocell Architecture is fashioned from ‘low tech biotech’ characterised by ubiquitous, durable and affordable materials


• We wish to blur the firm boundaries, which self-certain people delineate around all we can achieve

• Protocell Technology becomes a co-author in the production of architecture through the possession of living properties and its ability to self-assemble


• We tell you the tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow

• Protocell Architecture is better adapted to the prevailing physical and social conditions since it is founded on a new set of technologies that are not ‘alive’ but which possess some of the properties of living systems. As such these technologies are qualitatively different to the industrial and digital technologies that have become the mainstream tools of the twentieth century


• We will work with things that we do not want to design, things that already have systematic existence

• Protocell Technology has the capacity to transform and modify existing building materials and architecture with the potential for surprise


• You know as much as we do that architecture is nothing more than rhythms and connections

• Protocell Architecture embodies the complexity of materials in a literal, rather than metaphorical manner and becomes a physical part of our existence


• We will construct exquisite corpses not dead but alive and useful

• Protocell Architecture is central to the understanding of living systems. It allows us to work with and enhance the unavoidable inconsistency which is the essence of life itself


• We deal in a second aesthetic, one that initiates beginnings and moulds with natural forces

• Protocell Architecture is connected to the environment through constant conversation and energy exchange with the natural world in a series of chemical interactions called ‘metabolism’. This involves the conversion of one group of substances into another, either by absorbing or releasing energy - doing more with less

Architecture as Biosphere

• Living Architecture is part of the biosphere• Integrated through common chemical

language called metabolism • Metabolism connects living systems to the

environment

Metabolic Materials

• Materials that are capable of metabolism• These materials are ‘living’ and can be

thought of as Living Technology

Living Technology

• Possess some but not all of the properties of living systems

• Qualitatively different to 20th century technologies with which we are familiar

• Capable of growth, movement, sensitivity, repair, complex behaviour and even reproduction

Low Tech Biotech

• For practical purposes in the built environment, these materials need to be robust, safe, ubiquitous and inexpensive

Innovation by Design

• Use existing metabolic systems and materials to create the desired outcome:

• Crystal growth (biomorphic)• ‘Cellular Gardening’ of indigenous

microorganisms for selected characteristics

Roger Hiorns, Seizure

Seizure, Roger Hiorns



Silicon-Fixing Bacteria

Silicon Fixing Bacteria, Simon Park

Dune, Magnus Larsson



Bioluminescence

Bioluminescent Bacteria, Simon Park









Slime Mould

Slime Mould, Shin Tseng

Slime Mould, Shin Tseng

Slime Mould, Simon Park

Slime Mould, Simon Park

Slime Mould, Soichiro Tsuda





Diatoms

Diatom Factory, Shin Tseng





Plant/Human Nail, Shin Tseng

Bryopsis

Bryopsis, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Bryopsis, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Bryopsis & GFP Modified Bacteria, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Bryopsis & Magnetic Particles, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Bryopsis, Andrew Paine

Coralina

Coralina, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Coralina, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Limestone

Living Rocks

Blue Green Algae, Alexandru Vladimirescu

Stromatolite

Innovation by Invention

• Low tech, chemical computers• Protocell technology: an example of Living

Technology• NO DNA• Based on the chemistry of oils• Programmable using inorganic chemistry• Can produce architectural outcomes

Protocell Technology

Protocell, Martin Hanczyc

Protocell Cluster

Protocells, Martin Hanczyc

Modification of Environment

Protocells, Martin Hanczyc

Skin Shedding

Protocell, Martin Hanczyc

Producing Solid Material

Protocell Pearl

Protocell Shell

Sustainably Reclaiming Venice

• Protocell technology programmed to move away from light and deposit limestone under the wood pile foundations of the historic city

• Generation of an artificial reef• New ecological niches for marine organisms

Protocell Technology

Protocell technology Programmed to create solid out of dissolved carbon dioxideCourtesy Christian Kerrigan

Protocell Photosensitivity

Protocell technology under wood piles underneath VeniceProgrammed to move away from light filled canals to darkened foundationsCourtesy Christian Kerrigan

Protocell Activation

Protocell technology petrifying foundationsProtocell technology forms solid materials by crystallization and accretionCourtesy Christian Kerrigan

Venetian Artificial Reef

Artificial Reef underneath VeniceSensitive to environmental variables and local marine ecologyCourtesy Christian Kerrigan

Stop Press: Plastic Protocells

Plastic coated oil droplet, Andrew Loxley

Stop Press: Protein Protocells

Protein coated oil droplet, Andrew Loxley

E-ink Jacket

Summary

• Living Architecture is a new way of thinking about creating the built environment since it uses a bottom up approach to construction

• Living Architecture is in direct conversation with the environment through the physics and chemistry of the fundamental matter which can be thought of an ‘architectural protocell’

Acknowledgments

• Martin Hanczyc• Alexandru Vladimirescu• Neil Spiller• Christian Kerrigan• Shin Tseng• Andrew Paine• Andrew Loxley• Soichiro Tsuda• Simon Park• Matthias Hollwich

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living architecture > rachel armstrong > the bartlett school of architecture