Machines for living in: Connections and contrasts between designed architecture and the development of living forms

Abstract

There is a growing interest in applying principles of biological morphogenesis to architectural practice. Biological morphogenesis differs from conventional architectonics in several important ways; architecture is teleological, biology has no purpose; architecture is blueprinted and top-down, morphogenesis is bottom-up and emergent; construction uses external agents and skills (builders) whereas embryos build themselves from largely internal information; control of construction sites is hierarchical while morphogenesis uses rich feedback and distributed control; biological systems show adaptation and self-repair. Many materials are, however, common to the two, and both use techniques of scaffolding. There are several ways in which the fields can be brought together, either using biological systems directly (for example in synthetic biological approaches), or by engineering inorganic systems to realize the potentially useful processes characteristic of living things, such as automatic adaptation to the environment, and self-repair.