Dr Rachel Armstrong, teaching fellow at the Bartlett UCL, is this Thursday (26th November 2009) giving a lunch hour lecture on living buildings and metabolic materials. This fascinating approach to buildings suggests how buildings can be less like machines and behave more like biological organisms.

Looking at how a living system reacts to its surroundings through its metabolism, or how the reaction of one group of substances gets converted into another group – either with the absorption or the production of energy.

A metabolic material could take advantage of the entire surface of a building and use it as a dynamic membrane where metabolisms can be designed into the fabric which would allow desired interaction between the environment and the building. Dr Armstrong goes on to ask whether it would be possible to use this technology for carbon capture.

Photo credit: eco life