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Excerpt from wired.co.uk
"Dr Rachel Armstrong believes that biology could play a key part in building projects.
Armstrong teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, where she is advocating a new approach to architecture – one that sees buildings becoming living things.
Key to Armstrong’s work are protocells – little cells of fat that can be sprayed on a building, creating a sort of frosting. These are designed to trap carbon dioxide and solidify it, turning it into solid pearls of calcium carbonate or biolime or mock rock. This coating will protect the building and even mend cracks.
These protocells could even be used to stop Venice sinking, says Armstrong. Her plan is that the cells would be programmed to solidify when they get to the bottom of the lagoon, shoring up the foundations of the buildings above and thereby supporting the sinking structures.
Working with Neil Spiller, a fellow professor at the Bartlett, Armstrong has named this new model and methodology "plectic systems architecture".
The idea doesn’t stop with protocells. Armstrong argues that slime mould – something we scrupulously scrub off surfaces – could be used instead of computers to map out cities and populations. Mould could power what she terms “material computers”, which could be used to “calculate” for example, the best pathways to construct in an environment."
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