Biomanufacturing the future: biodigital architecture & genetics

Abstract

Biomanufacturing is a type of manufacturing or biotechnology that uses biological systems to produce biomaterials and biomolecules for using in medical and food industry. Biomanufacturing products are recovered from natural sources, such as animal or plant cells. The cells used during the production may have been naturally occurring or derived using genetic techniques. Since the year 2000 we began to apply this with architectural objectives, founding the Genetic Architectures Research Group & Office, and the Master of Biodigital Architecture, at the ESARQ, the School of Architecture of UIC Barcelona (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya). Research, practice and teaching come together on architecture and design, with the application of biology and digital tools, where biolearning and digital organicism are key words. The Biodigital Architecture and Genetics is the field where we began to work, exploring questions through interdisciplinary endeavors involving fields such as material science, biology, genetics, art, architecture, civil engineering, design, computer graphics, and human-computer interaction. We are exploring knowledge frontiers… And for really arriving to knowledge frontiers one main interdisciplinary cross-point is where genetics meets biology & digital, applied to architecture in our case (and also applied to art, civil engineering, design). This is the cross-point where we are, the cross-point that this paper is about, also presenting one of our last projects, the Scales Biodigital System Pavilion: the pavilion begun with the electron scanning microscope research of fish scales, and finished with the design of a digital manufactured pavilion that reacts to water without artificial motors, as a natural alternative without electricity or batteries.