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"Armstrong, Rachel"
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Star Ark : a living, self-sustaining spaceship
\"As space ventures have become more numerous, leading scientists and theorists have offered ways of building a living habitat in a hostile environment, taking an 'ecosystems' view of space colonization. The contributors to this volume take a radical multi-disciplinary view of the challenge of human space colonization through the ongoing project Persephone. This book fundamentally challenges prevalent ideas about sustainability and proposes a new approach to resource austerity and conservation and providing truly sustainable approaches that are life-promoting\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Towards the microbial home: An overview of developments in next‐generation sustainable architecture
Disruptive innovation is needed to raise the threshold of sustainable building performance, so that our buildings improve on net zero impacts and have a life‐promoting impact on the natural world. This article outlines a new approach to next‐generation sustainable architecture, which draws on the versatile metabolisms of microbes as a platform by incorporating microbial technologies and microbially produced materials into the practice of the built environment. The regenerative architecture arising from these interventions includes a broad range of advances from using new materials, to creating bioreceptive surfaces that promote life, and providing green, bio‐remediating energy from waste. Such innovations are presently reaching the marketplace as novel materials like Biocement® with lower embodied carbon than conventional materials that adopt microbially facilitated processes, and as novel utilities like PeePower® that transforms urine into electrical energy and bioreactor‐based building systems such as the pioneering BIQ building in Hamburg. While the field is still young, some of these products (e.g. mycelium biocomposites) are poised for uptake by the public–private economic axis to become mainstream within the building industry. Other developments are creating new economic opportunities for local maker communities that empower citizens and catalyse novel vernacular building practices. In particular, the activation of the microbial commons by the uptake of microbial technologies and materials through daily acts of living, ‘democratises’ resource harvesting (materials and energy) in ways that sustain life, and returns important decisions about how to run a home back to citizens. This disruptive move re‐centres the domestic‐commons economic axis to the heart of society, setting the stage for new vernacular architectures that support increasingly robust and resilient communities.
The paper outlines a new approach to next‐generation sustainable architecture, which draws on the versatile metabolisms of microbes as a platform by incorporating microbial technologies and microbially produced materials into the practice of the built environment. The regenerative architecture arising from these interventions includes a broad range of advances from using new materials, to creating bioreceptive surfaces that promote life, and providing green, bio‐remediating energy from waste comprising a 'regenerative' architectural toolset.
Journal Article
The art of experiment : post-pandemic knowledge practices for 21st century architecture and design
\"A handbook for navigating our troubled and precarious times intended to help readers imagine and make their world anew. In search of new knowledge practices that can help us make the world liveable again, this book takes the reader on a journey across time - from the deep past to the unfolding future. The authors search beyond human knowledge to establish negotiated partnerships with forms of knowledge within the planet itself, examining how we have manipulated these historically through an anthropocentric focus. The book explores the many different kinds of knowledge, and the diversity of instruments needed to invoke and actuate the potency of human and nonhuman agencies. Four key phases in our ways of knowing are identified: material, strengthening, reconfiguring and extending. These are exemplified through case studies that take the form of worlding experiments, creating a handbook for navigating our troubled and precarious times that may help each reader imagine and make their world anew. This pioneering work will inspire architects, artists, and designers as well as students, teachers and researchers across arts and design disciplines\"-- Provided by publisher
Book
Microbes as Teachers: Rethinking Knowledge in the Anthropocene
ABSTRACT
This opinion piece proposes that the environmental crises of our time arise from a failure to recognise the vital role of microbes in sustaining life on Earth, where ecosystems have been shaped for billions of years by microbial processes, including oxygen production, nutrient cycling and climate regulation. Yet the idea that microbes can ‘teach’ us how to navigate complexity, adapt across scales, and sustain planetary systems is still marginalised in science, policy, and education. A paradigm shift is proposed: microbes must be reframed as active collaborators in solving global challenges. This perspective is grounded in microbial ecology, Indigenous knowledge, and ethical philosophy, advocating for ‘learning’ through and with microbial life. To institutionalise this transition, policy and educational reforms are urged, centring microbial literacy as a foundation for ecological understanding. By integrating microbial agency into human knowledge systems, societal actions could be realigned with the biochemical and evolutionary logics that have sustained life for millennia. Ultimately, a deeper engagement with microbial knowledge is called for—one that informs a more sustainable future.
This essay positions microbes as active ‘teachers’ of ecological wisdom. Microbes demonstrate resilience, symbiosis and ecosystem intelligence through their metabolic networks, providing a dialogic learning experience. Emerging technologies enable reciprocal engagement with microbes, repositioning humans from observers to embedded learners of the vital 3.8‐billion‐year microbial legacy, offering lessons for bioremediation, decentralised governance, and post‐anthropocentric ethics. Key insights and actionable strategies for embracing microbes as ‘teachers’ are presented, aligning with the Initiative for Microbial Literacy (IMILI) principles. Microbial wisdom—collaboration, creativity, adaptation, and symbiosis—are presented as a blueprint for rethinking education, policy, and our relationship with life's unseen majority.
Journal Article
Vibrant architecture : matter as a codesigner of living structures
\"This book sets out the conditions under which the need for a new approach to the production of architecture in the twenty-first century is established, where our homes and cities are facing increasing pressures from environmental challenges that are compromising our lives and well being. Vibrant architecture embodies a new kind of architectural design practice that explores how lively materials, or 'vibrant matter', may be incorporated into our buildings to confer on them some of the properties of living things, such as movement, growth, sensitivity and self-repair. The theoretical and practical implications of how this may occur are explored through the application of a new group of materials. Characteristically, these substances possess some of the properties of living systems but may not have the full status of being truly alive. They include forms of chemical artificial life such as 'dynamic droplets' or synthetically produced soils. As complex systems, they are able to communicate directly with the natural world using a shared language of chemistry and so, negotiate their continued survival in a restless world. Vibrant architecture may create new opportunities for architectural design practice that venture beyond top-down form-finding programs, by enabling architects to co-design in partnership with human and nonhuman collectives, which result from the production of post natural landscapes. Ultimately, vibrant architecture may operate as an ecological platform for human development that augments the liveliness of our planet, rather than diminishes it\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Beyond the Petri Dish: Exhibitions as Catalysts for Microbial Literacy—Bridging Science, Culture and Society
ABSTRACT
Microbes orchestrate Earth's biosphere, yet public understanding of their essential role in sustainability, health and social equity remains limited. Traditional microbiology education often fails to engage diverse audiences, perpetuating gaps in societal decision‐making. This opinion piece argues for expanded microbial literacy through interdisciplinary, experiential learning, with exhibitions proposed as critical platforms to bridge science, culture and society. Drawing on the International Microbiology Literacy Initiative (IMiLI) mission, the contributions of spatial and narrative‐driven encounters are considered—from ancient memory palaces to modern theatres of microbial activity—in transforming otherwise microbial processes into tangible, transferrable, actionable knowledge. Individual case studies of historic and contemporary exhibitions such as We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture are examined through a curatorial vision to understand how the relationship between people and microbes can be shaped through experiential knowledge while advancing microbial literacy. However, such initiatives require careful balancing of innovation with ethical communication to avoid reductive or misleading narratives. Scaling these approaches through global collaboration between scientists, educators and designers—aligned with IMiLI's vision of lifelong, learner‐centric microbiology education—could effectively engage audiences who have limited access to scientific knowledge, resources, or engagement opportunities and support progress toward UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Microbes shape our health and environment, yet remain invisible to most people. Exhibitions use art, design and storytelling to make microbial science tangible and engaging. By turning processes into sensory experiences, they promote sustainability, health equity and global collaboration—aligning with lifelong learning and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Journal Article
Soft Living Architecture
Soft Living Architecture explores the invention of new architectures based on living processes. It crafts a unique intersection between two fast-developing disciplines: biomimicry and biodesign in architecture, and bioinformatics and natural computing in the natural sciences. This is the first book to examine both the theory and methodology of architecture and design working directly with the natural world. It explores a range of approaches from the use of life-like systems in building design to the employment of actual growing and living cell and tissue cultures as architectural materials – creating architecture that can change, learn and grow with us. The use of ‘living architecture’ is cutting-edge and speculative, yet it is also inspiring a growing number of designers worldwide to adopt alternative perspectives on sustainability and environmental design. The book examines the ethical and theoretical issues arising alongside case-studies of experimental practice, to explore what we mean by ‘natural’ in the Anthropocene, and raise deep questions about the nature of design and the design of nature. This provocative and at times controversial book shows why it will become ever more necessary to embrace living processes in architecture if we are to thrive in a sustainable future.
eBook
Program evaluation, preparedness and resilience: Western Australia examples
Community preparedness programs make an important contribution to disaster resilience, but their outcomes can be difficult to measure. Improved preparedness requires behaviour change, which can take a long time and multiple interventions.
Journal Article
