Modern biotechnologies give us unprecedented control of the fundamental building blocks of life. For designers, across a range of disciplines, emerging fields such as synthetic biology offer the promise of new sustainable materials and structures which may be grown, are self-assembling, self-healing and adaptable to change. While there is a thriving speculative discourse on the future of design in the age of biotechnology, there are few realized design applications.

This book, the first in the Bio Design series, acts as a bridge between design speculation and scientific reality and between contemporary design thinking, in areas such as architecture, product design and fashion design, and the traditional engineering approaches which currently dominate biotechnologies. Filled with real examples, Living Construction reveals how living cells construct and transform materials through methods of fabrication and assembly at multiple scales and how designers can utilize these processes.

About the Author

Martyn Dade-Robertson is Professor of Emerging Technology at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University and the Co-Director of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment. He holds degrees in architecture, architectural computing and synthetic biology.

Reviews

"This inspiring and informative book asks how we might construct material structures using biology. Its author, an architect and qualified synthetic biologist, is uniquely able to combine ambitious design and down-to-bench realism. Constructed around ideas - of life, of design, of fabrication - the book provides an ideal springboard to a biological architecture grounded, not in conceptual fantasies, but on what might really be achieved."

Jamie A. Davies, Professor of Experimental Anatomy, University of Edinburgh

"Living Construction is a readable synthesis of important principles for the new field of biodesign, written by someone with graduate training in both architecture and synthetic biology. Dade-Robertson clearly knows the details but has the gift of extrapolating these into accurate yet broad generalities. While design and biology each has its disciplinary theories and practices, this book distills sound principles for their intersection in biodesign, offering a very useful contemporary map for practitioners in the arts and sciences. I especially admire his answer to his own question, 'where is the information in biological assembly?', for how it addresses multiple scales simultaneously. This is a key primer for all students in biodesign."

Christina Cogdell, Professor, University of California at Davis

Book Information
ISBN 9781138363038
Author Martyn Dade-Robertson
Format Paperback
Page Count 106
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 180g