esteostudio - synthetic osteogenesis

Hybridization in biological approach integrates and generates new species that hardly to be categorized in Darwinism. Breakthrough in synthetic DNA in laboratory of Synthetic Genomics that leads by Craig Venter has created opportunity for future generation to basically create new species out of scratch. It means we are coming to an end of Darwinian Age and we are no longer limited to what "God" has "created" (if there is God).



Esteostudio (Skeletal Structural Design Laboratory) takes skeleton and bone structure design in an architectural context. By taking human and other organisms as precedent studies, skeletons and bones are being treated as structural material in both architectural and biological designs to create new possibilities. Biomimicry approach is being treated as a basic for understanding what is the best that nature has to offer. There is no clear boundary between future human and object, nature and artificial, organic and non-organic when comes to designing. With advancement in genetic, nano-technology, synthetic biology, semi-living materials and plasmatic design, designers and architects could take skeletal design as the principle to define the forms and functions of semi-living products. By breaking down the biomimicking process allows us to understand limitations in this material. However, the limitation also meant to be challenged. What nature has created is the harmony in design. Therefore both top-down and bottom-up design methodologies are being tested and executed along with the design process, while the nature rules is playing its part as the guidance for design constrains as well as ethical issues.

Homo-chiroptera

The end of the Darwinian interlude?

After Rachel Armstrong's Systems Architecture lecture, I looked into biotechnology more deeply and what got me excited in the past few weeks were:

1. What is going in J. Craig Venter Institute, which started with four basic chemicals that form an DNA and the first synthetic bacterial genome "born" in the laboratory this year.

2. Darwin v.s. Venter; the juxtaposition which Darwinian Theory shows that human wasn't made by God and Venter who is aclaimed playing the role of "God" by creating new life form.

3. Bottom up design method where molecular design in nano-scale defines the possible or unknown outcomes.

4. Success of Craig Venter may turn into what Freeman Dyson argued as "the end of the Darwinian interlude" (www.edge.org)

5. Works shown in Design and the Elastic Mind in MoMA New York ended in May even though I missed it but the online exhibition is available.

6. Development of DNA design software that allows anyone to design new species out of scratch, i.e. Gene Designer Software at https://www.dna20.com

7. With genomic technology, new life forms that could be created out of GenBank's database that contained over 65 billion nucleotide bases in more than 61 million sequences (2006).

On the verge of creating synthetic life

First GM human embryo created.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3908516.ece

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/the-first-genet.html

Plants intelligence

Recent research from Vidi researcher Josef Stuefer at the Radboud University Nijmegen reveals that plants have their own chat systems that they can use to warn each other. Therefore plants are not boring and passive organisms that just stand there waiting to be cut off or eaten up. Many plants form internal communications networks and are able to exchange information efficiently.

Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks. Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners. These connections enable the plants to share information with each other via internal channels. They are therefore very similar to computer networks. But what do plants want to chat to each other about?

Recently Stuefer and his colleagues were the first to demonstrate that clover plants warn each other via the network links if enemies are nearby. If one of the plants is attacked by caterpillars, the other members of the network are warned via an internal signal. Once warned, the intact plants strengthen their chemical and mechanical resistance so that they are less attractive for advancing caterpillars. Thanks to this early warning system, the plants can stay one step ahead of their attackers. Experimental research has revealed that this significantly limits the damage to the plants.

[source] http://www.physorg.com/news109944832.html

The Pet Project

Aristotle divided all living things between plants and animals. However, he never expected one day these living things will merge. In fact, with the breakthrough in genetic and nanotechnology all organic and inorganic creatures are merging. We are now living in a cybernetic world that technologies have made possible marriage between all sorts of odd relationships. There is literally no clear definition for living or non-living things anymore, the best example is the whole living virtual world behind the electronic skin. Traditional structure of classifying living things has collapsed, and being replaced by a more complicated system that no longer identifies individual or creature in a single category. Crossbreeds or hybrids are the new majority and human is facing a great challenge in avoiding creating any irresponsible or careless outcomes that are undesirable. Therefore, the new disciplines and parameters of designing for the new world would be as important as the ethical issue while manipulating these technologies.

However, the hybrid also opens up new possibilities to solving the world crisis that human are facing in Anthropocene age - global warming. In this proposal, I am looking at the extreme accelerating human population growth as one of the pros and cons in global warming after industrial revolution. The thought of "tree for life" is being adopted and a new "tree" has been invented, by turning a plant/tree into a pet/companion for human. By assuming a one to one human:tree ratio as an ideal scenario for reducing CO2 and cleansing the air pollution, it also shows some bright side in tackling the global warming in the next 50 years. Of course, it is only one of the many changes that human need to make in sustaining the human history on earth.
A new pet is being introduced to future kids as their lifetime companion, a genetic mortified plant that shares the childhood memories and grows with a human being, while being shaped and nurtured into a matured furniture (or other object) that takes sunlight and CO2 as its fuel (autotrophic) while also being fed with human love and synthetic nutrient.

With hydroponics and aeroponics method as its fundamental, a walking plant with controlled size root in a nutrient container that works like a human stomach that provides sufficient nutrition for the plant to grow into a self-sustained creature. As it was nurtured by a master, its senses react particularly to the master's voice, touch, smell, emotions and needs.

Design secrets from nature

Inventors, engineers and architects have been referring to nature for inspirations. Architects used to search for structural solution and form possibilities from animal bones, shells or plants. What they have done are rather straight forward and simple, or merely 'copying' from the 'precedent studies'. However the designs from nature do not come in single design paradigm but most of them are well-integrated and interrelated to overcome different design problems in their contexts.

Throughout the years since industrial evolution, mathematicians, physicians, architects, biologists and other different professions have been working independently in their own field and solving problems with their own skill-sets and disciplinary principles. Collaborations between them seemed difficult. However, if we look out into nature, it does not classify its creations into specific categories like we do, yet everything is working in a cycle interfering each other harmonically. Apparently, conventional linear way of problem solving understood by human has created more problems in life instead of improving our world.

In order to discover the real design wisdom from nature, we have to look at our 'case studies' in an overall condition from its evolutionary history as well as the context. As concluded by Robert Full in one of his talks, design secrets are found in:

1. Distributed control to smart part, not all in brain but tuned parts.

2. Use hybrid solutions, integrated & robust.

3. Do not mimic nature, learn from nature and get inspired.




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LILYPAD, A FLOATING ECOPOLIS FOR CLIMATE REFUGEES

2100, a large crowd of ecological refugees
by Vincent Callebaut

Further to the anthropogenic activity, the climate warms up and the ocean level increases. According to the principle of Archimedes and contrary to preconceived notions, the melting of the arctic ice-floe will not change the rising of the water exactly as an ice cube melting in a glass of water does not make its level rise. However, there are two huge ice reservoirs that are not on the water and whose melting will transfer their volume towards the oceans, leading to their rising. It deals with the ice caps of Antarctic and Greenland on the one hand, and the continental glaciers on the other hand. Another reason of the ocean rising, that does not have anything to do with the ice melting is the water dilatation under the effect of the temperature.

The floating structure in "branches" of the Ecopolis is directly inspired of the highly ribbed leave of the great lilypad of Amazonia Victoria Regia increased 250 times. Coming from the family of Nympheas, this aquatic plant with exceptional plasticity was discovered by the German botanist Thaddeaus Haenke and dedicated to the Queen Victoria of England in the 19th Century. The double skin is made of polyester fibres covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) like an anatase which by reacting to the ultraviolet rays enable to absorb the atmospheric pollution by photocatalytic effect. Entirely autosufficient, Lilypad takes up the four main challenges launched by the OECD in March 2008: climate, biodiversity, water and health. It reached a positive energetic balance with zero carbone emission by the integration of all the renewable energies (solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, phytopurification, biomass) producing thus durably more energy that it consumes! True biotope entirely recyclable, this floating Ecopolis tends thus towards the positive eco-accountancy of the building in the oceanic ecosystems by producing and softening itself the oxygen and the electricity, by recycling the CO2 and the waste, by purifying and softening biologically the used waters and by integrating ecological niches, aquaculture fields and biotic corridors on and under its body to meet its own food needs.





It is a true amphibian half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting the biodiversity to develop its fauna and flora around a central lagoon of soft water collecting and purifying the rain waters. This artificial lagoon is entirely immersed ballasting thus the city. It enables to live in the heart of the subaquatic depths. The multifunctional programming is based on three marinas and three mountains dedicated respectively to the work, the shops and the entertainments. The whole set is covered by a stratum of planted housing in suspended gardens and crossed by a network of streets and alleyways with organic outline. The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of the couple Human / Nature and to explore new modes of living the sea by building with fluidity collective spaces in proximity, overwhelming spaces of social inclusion suitable to the meeting of all the inhabitants' denizen or foreign-born, recent or old, young or aged people.


(source: http://vincent.callebaut.org)

Dr. Eugene Tsui, “the seminal architect of the 21st century”

Yes, I know the first thing captures your eyes in the interview is what Eugene wears. He calls the purple costume a "Solar Suit", which can generate 180 Watts energy out of 12sq feet of mini-disc-shape photophotaic solar panel. Well, don't judge him by his fashion sense.


CTV--Canadian Television Broadcasting Stations: Steve Murphy Interviews Eugene Tsui,
April 16, 2008, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

CTV Interview with Eugene Tsui- Canadian Broadcasting Co from eugene tsui on Vimeo.

Self-replicating machine

In cytology, mitosis is a complicated process when a cell splits into two identical sets in two daughter nuclei. The chromosomes line up inside the nucleus of the cell and then each one splits in half. In human body, the DNA splits in half, but it has a way of replicating. After the DNA has made copies of itself, each cell divides and becomes two cells.

What if a man-made device or machine could replicate itself like a cell?

In 1948, a Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann proposed a kinematic self-reproducing automaton model, which he named as "Universal Constructor". A self-replicating machine would need to have the capacity to gather energy and raw materials, process the raw materials into finished components, and then assemble them into a copy of itself.


"Proposed demonstration of simple robot self-replication", NASA Conference Publication 2255 (1982), based on the Advanced Automation for Space Missions NASA/ASEE summer study Held at the University of Santa Clara in Santa Clara, California, from June 23-August 29, 1980.

In 1956 mathematician Edward F. Moore proposed the first known suggestion for a practical real-world self-replicating machine, published in Scientific American. Moore's "artificial living plants" were proposed as machines able to use air, water and soil as sources of raw materials and to draw its energy from sunlight via a solar battery or a steam engine. He chose the seashore as an initial habitat for such machines, giving them easy access to the chemicals in seawater, and suggested that later generations of the machine could be designed to float freely on the ocean's surface as self-replicating factory barges or to be placed in barren desert terrain that was otherwise useless for industrial purposes. The self-replicators would be "harvested" for their component parts, to be used by humanity in other non-replicating machines.


Sustainable or destructable: Self-replicating object with Phylogenomics ability.

Phylogenomics is a method of assigning a function to a gene based on its evolutionary history in a Phylogenetic tree. Phylogenomics uses knowledge on the evolution of a gene to improve function prediction.

Learning from nature

"Our planet-mates (plants, animals and microbes) have been patiently perfecting their wares for more than 3.8 billion years ... turning rock and sea into a life-friendly home. What better models could there be?" (Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature" by Janine M. Benyus)

Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably. Biomimetics is the word most frequently used in scientific and engineering literature that is meant to indicate the underlying biological paradigms present keeping each species functioning in its own unique way.


As explained in http://biomimicryinstitute.org:If we want to consciously emulate nature's genius, we need to look at nature differently. In biomimicry, we look at nature as model, measure, and mentor.

1. Nature as model: Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then emulates these forms, process, systems, and strategies to solve human problems – sustainably. The Biomimicry Guild and its collaborators have developed a practical design tool, called the Biomimicry Design Spiral, for using nature as model.
2. Nature as measure: Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the sustainability of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has learned what works and what lasts. Nature as measure is captured in Life's Principles and is embedded in the evalute step of the Biomimicry Design Spiral.
3. Nature as mentor: Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but what we can learn from it.

Get more inspired by Janice's talk at TED where she presented 12 BIG sustainable design ideas from nature:

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A new Epoch — the Anthropocene

The term Anthropocene, first suggested in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen, explains that humans are now changing the world on a global scale and ushering in the new era in geologic time. [Crutzen, P. J. and E. F. Stoermer (2000). The Anthropocene. Global Change Newsletter (41)]

Anthropocene = Anthropo (man) + cene (new geological age)

As written in IGBP Newsletter 41, May 2000 by Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, they explained with the importance of marking a new age in geological scale:

"Considering these and many other major and still growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales, it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term 'anthropocene' for the current geological epoch. The impacts of current human activities will continue over long periods."

Theoretically, I believe there are two major historical events that marked a significant cause to the anthropocene age:

1. The result of vast expansion of human populations which increased tenfold since approximately 2-300 years ago.
2. The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and early 19th centuries started in the Britain and then spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world.


Human activities by the wide spread of world population with advancing technologies after the Industrial Revolution created increasing forces that affect the Earth on a planetary scale, which recognized by George Perkins Marsh in 1864 in his book titled 'Man and Nature', more recently reprinted as 'The Earth as Modified by Human Action".

"It is still too early to attempt scientific method in discussing this problem, nor is our present store of the necessary facts by any means complete enough to warrant me in promising any approach to fulness of statement respecting them. Systematic observation in relation to this subject has hardly yet begun, and the scattered data which have chanced to be recorded have never been collected. It has now no place in the general scheme of physical science, and is matter of suggestion and speculation only, not of established and positive conclusion. At present, then, all that I can hope is to excite an interest in a topic of much economical importance, by pointing out the directions and illustrating the modes in which human action has been, or may be, most injurious or most beneficial in its influence upon the physical conditions of the earth we inhabit."

However, the impact on Earth caused by human activities was not as significant and noticeable until recent decades, when "unnatural" catastrophes happened and threatened human lives, in many ways i.e. disasters caused by global warming, new diseases that wiped out human populations like dropping nuclear bomb, unexpected change of climate and living environment in both micro and macro scale. Frightening news and scary forecast of future earth finally caught human attention on the circumstances everyone of us responsible for in making the today and tomorrow's Earth.

Even though it is already a proven fact but it is still hard to swallow that we are now making a new Earth by just living our modern lifestyle. It is shocking that every bit of our activity ties back to the invention of steam engine in the Industrial Revolution and every bit of our action might devote to destructing the future Earth. By accepting that we are living in the age of Anthropocene, all 6.5 billion of human (and counting) are no longer just the most dominant species on the planet Earth but now, the architects for this planet.

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