Bio-Inspired Intelligent Architecture: Embedding Computation and Synthetic Biology in Built Environments

As computing devices shrink in size while expanding in capabilities, future architects could embed intelligent technologies directly into the fabric of buildings and cities. From distributed sensors and microprocessors enabling structures to self-regulate to synthetic biological systems that allow materials to grow and adapt – innovations at the nexus of materials science and biotechnology promise to transform inert spaces into living, breathing environments attuned to inhabitants’ needs. This paper explores research trajectories toward such infrastructure, while surfacing unresolved challenges and questions.

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Ubiquitous Sensing and Automation

Networked sensors and microcomputers embedded unobtrusively into the built environment endow architectural systems with self-monitoring and automation capabilities akin to computers. Wall membranes with osmotic moisture actuators passively regulate indoor humidity through pores that open or close. Photovoltaic skin coatings harvest energy from sunlight to power electrochromic windows, electronically adjusting opacity and warmth. Sweat mapping skin conductivity over pressure maps on floors document where occupants congregate and morph future layouts accordingly. Enzymatic chemical sensors dispersed through ducting likewise sniff for signature volatile compounds indicating room cleanliness or food ripening. And spectrographic lenses distributed across ceilings chromatographically analyze lighting wavelengths and intensities to biologically tune circadian rhythms and mood. In effect, the entire architectural enclosure becomes an intelligent peripheral attuned to inhabitants’ states.

Over time, accumulated environmental and occupancy data auto-calibrate building configuration to statistically optimized setpoints for maximizing sustainability and comfort. Indeed machine-learning algorithms continually retrain sensor-actuator feedback loops as user patterns evolve or surrounding contexts change. This yield buildings behaving like self-regulating organisms that continually heal and rejuvenate themselves.

Of course, such ubiquitous sensing poses privacy risks and over-automation weaken human agency if system behaviors become inscrutable black boxes. Transparent data sharing policies will remain necessary even while computing diffuses environmentally to surround inhabitants unconsciously like air.

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Morphogenic Materials and Reconfigurable Structures

Beyond embedded smart systems, Active Matter physics manipulates properties like tensile strength, chemical reactivity, and shape memory to enable remodeling architectural structures and surfaces at fuller scales. For example, pressurizable fluid cavities lining concrete fa?ades hydraulically constrict and expand to ripple, flex, and undulate entire walls. Piezoresistivity similarly allow glass panes to morph like membrane lenses when electrically stimulated. And photostrictive materials that twist under light exposure open curled window apertures resembling camera irises. Through such Active Matter, inert walls transform into living interfaces.

Interior configurations likewise reorganize on demand by digitally sequencing the inflation strength of interconnected air pockets lining floors and furniture to morph hard surfaces into ergonomic topographies optimized for varied uses. Whole sections physically rearrange by inflating modular floor segments into reassembling jigsaw patterns - dynamically reconfiguring rooms with the ease of sliding folders across a computer desktop. And switchable adhesives enable quick reattachment of wall partitions along mirrored studs, allowing quick office layout changes without construction. The result feels like tangible animation editing, where digital commands warp physical spaces.

There remain engineering challenges, however, in scaling materials that reshape at tabletop scales to reconfiguring multi-story architectures. Nevertheless, prototypes demonstrate a radical future where rooms ripple, swell, divide, merge and migrate through software direction alone.

Bio-Synthetic Building Materials

The most profound metamorphosis come from synthesizing inorganic and biological matter into hybrid construction materials capable of living behaviors like self-repairing cracks or respirating gases through vascular channels. Already researchers embed microbial spore cultures into structural concrete so that accumulating moisture microbially calcifies limestone to close fissures, achieving self-healing walls. Similarly spraying hydrogel-embedded bacterial cellulose rebar precipitate calcite biominerals that resist corrosion, promising self-immunizing foundations.

Synthetic biology even genetically recode microbes to precipitate entirely novel minerals as robust as steel using far less energy than traditional manufacturing - enabling sustainable construction from cultured bio-cements. Photosynthetic membrane coatings or embedded algae likewise generate renewable nutrients and energy through building facades. Mature vines weaving through scaffolds can already self-reinforce aging dams and bridges, inspiring rotational 3d printing with robotically coordinated brush and trowel nozzles to geometrically extrude high-rise towers from biosynthesized concretes shaped in place. The visions articulate a manufacturing continuum between synthetic cellular agriculture and unit-based masonry patterning - incubating load-bearing architecture from cultured cells.

These speculative living materials do not simply mimic biology but will integrate it as computing does electricity. Bricks here are user-grown rather than kiln-fired. Steel pulses from cell cultures not smelters. Buildings metabolize sunlight not electricity. The designs collapse barriers between habitat and architecture by directly encoding architectural chemistries with the biochemical processes underpinning all organisms. The principles ultimately industrialize the biological genius which sculpts shells, weaves silk, stiffens wood, and calcifies skeletal matter mimicking eons of evolution. Buildings thus morph almost embryonically while adopting incredible material efficiencies and sustainability from nature’s 3.8 billion years of scientific research.

Of course, any wide scale biological manipulation of urban spaces risks upending fragile ecosystems if mismanaged. And automated living architecture could enable surveillance states with greater ease than digital systems alone. So policies ensuring scientifically informed oversight and democratized governance of bio-infrastructures will remain essential guardrails. Nevertheless, thoughtfully incorporating life’s operating systems through synthetic biology will transform buildings into extraordinary living environments - potentially more regenerative than destructive of this planet’s interwoven biological and cognitive systems.

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Embedding Synthetic Senses

A final frontier proposes instrumenting architecture to extend human senses themselves by translating unperceivable aspects of reality - like infrared wavelengths or ultrasonic vibrations - into sensory experiences that densify environmental insight. For example, thermographic arrays re-represent building hotspots as shimmering auroras of visible light instead of raw numeric data. Floor tiles likewise pulse delicate rhythms from embedded subsonic speakers, allowing feet to quite literally perceive approaching footsteps or background beats normally drowned beneath audible decibels. And circulating microdroplets hydrate skin interfaces with coded moisture for sensing humidity, pollution, or occupancy levels haptically rather than digitally. Architecture effectively becomes an analog UI for imparting extra senses synthesized from environmental telemetry - enabling fuller perceptional embodiments.

Interior surfaces further engage embedded displays, phased array waveguides, and volumetric light fields to project immersive augmented or mixed realities through floor-to-ceiling screens. These overlay virtual avatars, data visualizations, and even interactive memories onto tangible architectural contexts to enhance meaning and spatial legibility. Additionally augmenting thermal, olfactory, or gustatory experiences extend the palette for multimedia experiences grounded by persistent physical enclosure. The sentient architecture consequently feels like a perceptual exoskeleton - at once magnifying exterior sensing while also digitally enriching interior ambiences to promote wellbeing through multi-sensory environmental enrichment.

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Counterpoint

There are certainly philosophical counterpoint questions even within these largely incremental visions of bio-inspired architecture. For example, are microbial cultures manipulating concrete materialities still “alive” if externally cultured and embedded rather than voluntarily inhabiting environments? When does complex chemistry end and basic cognition begin in classifying living architectures? There may be no clear dividing lines. But the ambiguity itself productively focus discourse on rethinking construction.