Protocell Architecture: Architectural Design

140 Pages·2011·30.96 MB·English

by  Neill Spiller

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
MARCH/APRIL 2011
PROFILE NO 210
GUEST-EDITED BY
NEIL SPILLER AND RACHEL ARMSTRONG
PROTOCELL
ARCHTECTURE

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
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FORTHCOMING TITLES
MAY/JUNE 2011 — PROFILE NO 211
LATIN AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS
GUEST-EDITOR MARIANA LEGUÍA
The announcement of Rio de Janeiro as the 2016 Olympic host city has placed Latin America on the
world’s stage. Now, for the fi rst time since the mid-20th century when Modernist urban design was
undertaken on an epic scale, Latin America is the centre of international attention and architectural
pilgrimage. The mass migrations from the countryside and the erection of informal settlements in the
late 20th century left cities socially and spatially divided. As a response, in recent decades resourceful
governments and practices have developed innovative approaches to urban design and development
that are less to do with utopian and totalitarian schemes and more to do with urban acupuncture,
working within, rather than opposing, informality to stitch together disparate parts of the city. Once
a blind spot in cities’ representation, informality is now considered an asset to be understood and
incorporated. Today, more than 50 per cent of the world´s population live in cities for the fi rst time
in human history, and an increasing amount in slums. As a result of globalisation, Latin America is
now once again set to go through major change. The solutions presented in this issue represent the
vanguard in mitigating strong social and spatial divisions in cities across the globe.
• Contributors include: Saskia Sassen, Hernando de Soto, Ricky Burdett and the former mayor
of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa.
• Featured architects: Teddy Cruz, Urban-Think Tank, Jorge Jáuregui, Alejandro Echeverri,
Volume  No  MMBB and Alejandro Aravena.
ISBN    • Covers large-scale urban case studies, such as the revitalisation of Bogotá and Medellín.
JULY/AUGUST 2011 — PROFILE NO 212
THE MATHEMATICS OF SPACE
GUEST-EDITED BY GEORGE L LEGENDRE
Over the last 15 years, contemporary architecture has been profoundly altered by the advent
of computation and information technology. The ubiquitous dissemination of design software
and numerical fabrication machinery have re-actualised the traditional role of geometry in
architecture and opened it up to the wondrous possibilities afforded by topology, non-Euclidean
geometry, parametric surface design and other areas of mathematics. From the technical aspects
of scripting code to the biomorphic paradigms of form and its associations with genetics, the
impact of computation on the discipline has been widely documented. What is less clear, and has
largely escaped scrutiny so far, is the role mathematics itself has played in this revolution. Hence
the time has come for designers, computational designers and engineers to tease the mathematics
out of their respective works, not to merely show how it is done – a hard and futile challenge
for the audience – but to refl ect on the roots of the process and the way it shapes practices and
intellectual agendas, while helping defi ne new directions. This issue of 2 asks: Where do we
stand today? What is up with mathematics in design? Who is doing the most interesting work?
The impact of mathematics on contemporary creativity is effectively explored on its own terms.
• Contributors include: Mark Burry, Bernard Cache, Philippe Morel, Antoine Picon, Dennis
Shelden, Fabien Scheurer and Michael Weinstock.
Volume  No 
ISBN   
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 — PROFILE NO 213
RADICAL POST-MODERNISM
GUEST-EDITED BY CHARLES JENCKS AND FAT
Radical Post-Modernism (RPM) marks the resurgence of a critical architecture that
engages in a far-reaching way with issues of taste, space, character and ornament. Bridging
high and low cultures, it immerses itself in the age of information, embracing meaning
and communication, embroiling itself in the dirty politics of taste by drawing ideas from
beyond the narrow confi nes of architecture. It is a multi-dimensional, amorphous category,
which is heavily infl uenced by contemporary art, cultural theory, modern literature and
everyday life. This title of 2 demonstrates how, in the age of late capitalism, Radical
Post-Modernism can provide an architecture of resistance and contemporary relevance,
forming a much needed antidote to the prevailing cult of anodyne Modernism and the
vacuous spatial gymnastics of the so-called digital ‘avant-garde’.
• Contributions from: Sean Griffi ths, Charles Holland, Sam Jacob, Charles Jencks
and Kester Rattenbury
• Featured architects: ARM, Atelier Bow Wow, Crimson, CUP, FAT, FOA, Édouard
François, Terunobu Fujimori, Hild und K, Rem Koolhaas, John Kormelling,
muf, Valerio Olgiati
Volume  No 
ISBN   
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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
GUEST-EDITED BY PROTOCELL
NEIL SPILLER AND
RACHEL ARMSTRONG
ARCHTECTURE
|
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
VOL 81, NO 2
MARCH/APRIL 2011
ISSN 0003-8504
PROFILE NO 210
ISBN 978-0470-748282
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IN THIS ISSUE
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
GUEST-EDITED BY PROTOCELL ARCHTECTURE
NEIL SPILLER AND
RACHEL ARMSTRONG
 EDITORIAL
Helen Castle
 ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITORS
Neil Spiller and
Rachel Armstrong
 SPOTLIGHT
Visual highlights of the issue
 INTRODUCTION
It’s a Brand New Morning
Neil Spiller and
Rachel Armstrong
EDITORIAL BOARD
Will Alsop
Denise Bratton
Paul Brislin
 Structure and the Synthesis of Life
Mark Burry
Martin Hanczyc
André Chaszar
Nigel Coates
Peter Cook Defi ning New
Teddy Cruz 
Max Fordham Architectural Design
Massimiliano Fuksas
Edwin Heathcote Principles with ‘Living’
Michael Hensel
Anthony Hunt Inorganic Materials
Charles Jencks
Bob Maxwell Leroy Cronin
Jayne Merkel
Peter Murray
Cronin pioneers a fundamentally
Mark Robbins
Deborah Saunt new approach to materials, scaling
Leon van Schaik
up from the nanoscale.
Patrik Schumacher
Neil Spiller
Michael Weinstock
Ken Yeang
Alejandro Zaera-Polo
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 Dream a Little Dream
Mark Morris
 An Architectural Chemistry
Omar Khan
 Protocells: The Universal Solvent
Neil Spiller
 How Protocells Can Make
‘Stuff’ Much More Interesting
Rachel Armstrong
 Soil and Protoplasm:  Back to the Future
The Hylozoic Ground project Paul Preissner
Philip Beesley and
Rachel Armstrong  Line Array: Protocells as
Dynamic Structure
 Authorship at Risk: The IwamotoScott Architecture
Role of the Architect (Lisa Iwamoto)
Dan Slavinsky
 AVATAR and the Politics of
Protocell Architecture
Nic Clear
 COUNTERPOINT
Bettering Biology?
Bill Watts
 Proto-Design: Architecture’s
Primordial Soup and the Quest
for Units of Synthetic Life
Neri Oxman
Oxman explores how material properties
are a potent intermediary for the built
environment.
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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
MARCH/APRIL 2011
PROFILE NO 210
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EDITORIAL
Helen Castle
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Neil Spiller has had a long association with Architectural Design ( ) and the
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visionary in architecture. A veteran guest-editor, this is the sixth issue of that
he has edited. His previous ones include his two seminal issues on cyberspace in
1995 and 1998; Integrating Architecture, 1996; Young Blood, 2001; and Refl exive
Architecture, 2002. Whereas Neil’s issues on cyberspace encouraged us in the
Net’s infancy to imagine where the virtual might take us, Protocell Architecture
persuades us that a very different future is in sight for architectural matter. The
innate cumbersomeness and inertness of conventional construction materials
and systems, which block any real engagement with ecological processes, is
to be overturned by the chemical innovations of synthetic biology – ‘protocell
technology’. That is, artifi cial cell systems that self-reproduce and maintain
themselves. This might be a tomorrow’s world that is being prefi gured, but it is
fi rmly rooted in the science of today. For this issue, Neil has paired up with Dr
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Rachel Armstrong (Rachel also has an under her belt, having edited Space
Architecture in 2001). A trained medical doctor and scientifi c researcher, Rachel
is currently investigating ‘living materials’ and their potential for built structures.
Along with Martin Hanczyc and Leroy Cronin, she provides much of the
explanation in this issue of the ‘primordial molecular globules’ that are protocells.
They scale up protocells from the nano scale so that they are visible before our very
eyes in the photographs that accompany their articles.
Why, however, disrupt the today with a seemingly impossible vision of the
tomorrow? Shouldn’t we be fully taken up with the present burdens of the
contemporary economic climate and the immediate wrangle with LEED and BRE
ratings? What if established technologies and concrete, timber and steel can only
take us so far? With conventional materials we might just be chipping away rather
than opening up far-reaching new scientifi c opportunities. The current tool kit
and limited palette of materials may just not be suffi cient to tackle the shortfall
in resources and the increasing vicissitudes in global weather systems. It is highly
likely that building materials will only become fully responsive to natural ecologies
if they are made up of cellular materials – albeit inorganic; these new materials
could have the potential to modulate their environment in terms of temperature,
light and humidity to their natural surroundings, but also power generation and
self-repair. Neil Spiller and Rachel Armstrong with their contributors effectively
open the door on this possibility for us. 1
Text © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image © Steve Gorton
Neil Spiller and Martin Pearce (eds),
1 Architects in Cyberspace, Academy
Editions, November–December 1995
In Spiller’s fi rst co-edited issue of 2,
he opened up the possibilities of the
virtual for readers.
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Neil Spiller, Bitai Table, 1996 Neil Spiller, Nativity in Black, 1996 Rachel Armstrong and Alexander Vladimirescu, Extreme
top left: Table design for an ophthalmic surgeon. Its top right: Part 3 of the Trashed Tryptych, a conceptual Environmental Impact on Bryopsis Morphology: A Model
geometries are representations of the various shapes project depicting the distortion of the body as it becomes Organism for Systems Architecture and a Challenge
of artifi cial lens replacements for human eyes plus the invisibly puckered, extruded and penetrated by wet and for Natural Selection, Cantacuzio Institute, Bucharest,
ribbon model of phosphorescent protein. digital technology. Darwin Now Award, 2009
above: Video still footage, edited by Stuart Munro, taken
from the shoreline of the Black Sea, Romania, home of
the green algae Bryopsis plumose, a giant celled plant
that is capable of regeneration after complete mechanical
destruction. Experiments were conducted in collaboration
with Alexander Vladimirescu to observe how the body of
the regenerating seaweed could be manipulated using
magnetism after exposing the healing fragments to
particles of magnetite.
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ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITORS
NEIL SPILLER AND RACHEL ARMSTRONG
Neil Spiller trained as an architect in London during the 1980s. He worked in
commercial architectural practice for nearly a decade while simultaneously founding
his own experimental practice and teaching architecture. In 1992 he joined the
Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London (UCL) and was
a major contributor to its renaissance, becoming Vice-Dean and Director of
Graduate Design. With Phil Watson, he founded the renowned and infl uential
Bartlett teaching unit, Unit 19, and in 2004 founded the Advanced Virtual and
Technological Architecture Research Group (AVATAR). AVATAR’s mission is
to speculate on the future of architectural design through the lens of advanced
technology. It works within the realms of architecture, Surrealism, synthetic biology,
fi lm, animation, interaction, cybernetics, digital fabrication and digital theory.
Neil is now Dean of the School of Architecture and Construction at the
University of Greenwich, London. He is a visionary architect, writer, teacher
and critic. He has been instrumental in developing cyberspatial architectural
sensibilities, and was the fi rst architect to write in any detail about nanotechnology,
as well as one of the fi rst to speculate on refl exive digital environments. In recent
years he has drawn and written extensively on the surreal implications of advanced
technology and the ethics of architecture and architects. He has written and co-
written many books about the futures of architecture and their recent past, and has
now guest-edited six issues of 2.
Rachel Armstrong is a co-director of AVATAR, in Architecture and Synthetic
Biology, at the Bartlett. She is also a Senior TED Fellow, and Visiting Research
Assistant at the Center for Fundamental Living Technology, Department of
Physics and Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark. Her research investigates
‘living materials’, a new approach to building materials that suggests it is possible
for our buildings to share some of the properties of living systems. She is a
medical doctor with qualifi cations in general practice, a multimedia producer, a
science-fi ction author and an arts collaborator whose current research explores the
possibilities of architectural design and mythologies about new technology.
Rachel is currently collaborating with international scientists and architects to
explore cutting-edge, sustainable technologies by developing ‘metabolic materials’
in an experimental setting. These materials possess some of the properties of living
systems and couple artifi cial structures to natural ones in the anticipation that our
buildings will undergo an ‘origins of life’-style transition from inert to living matter
and become part of the biosphere. By generating metabolic materials, it is hoped
that cities will be able to replace the energy they draw from the environment,
respond to the needs of their populations and eventually become regarded as ‘alive’
in the same way that we think about parks or gardens. 1
Text © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 6(t), 7(t) © Neil Spiller; p 6(b) © Rachel Armstroing; p 7(b) ©
Courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/TED
top: Neil Spiller
above: Rachel Armstrong
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