Thinking Soils: New PhD studentship Available
We are pleased to announce a PhD studentship in a pioneering new EPSRC funded project: “Thinking Soils”. We are looking for highly motivated and talented Design Lead Researcher to join the team and take a leading role in a new field of Bio-Design by exploring the design potentials of living materials which respond to physical […]
EPSRC Design the Future 2: Thinking Soils
We have just completed our Booster Grant application following our Computational Colloids Pilot Project. Inevitably in writing the follow-up grant we have been unable to include everything that we wanted. In particular we didn’t have room in our two page project report for a visual summary of our results or a diagram which helped to […]
Future buildings could grow their own foundations
Reuters have produce a short video featuring out Computational Colloids project: Researchers at the universities of Newcastle and Northumbria want to render traditional building foundations obsolete. They’re working on engineering individual cells that react to changes in the environment and strengthen the soil around them, potentially making concrete-filled trenches unnecessary. Jim Drury reports. Full video […]
Design of press mechanism
The physical demonstrator needs to integrate a mechanism strong enough to produce the range of pressures required to activate our pressure-sensitive bacteria, in a form-factor that is easy to transport and operate in the microbiology lab. The sketches below correspond to some initial studies on mechanisms that enable producing relatively high force loads. The exploration […]
Challenges of interdisciplinary research
One of the main challenges in this project is the different disciplines, practices and spaces that come into play. The ultimate goal of Computational Colloids is to produce a genetically modified organism that is sensitive to pressure changes. This is particularly relevant in the context of foundations, where building produce pressure on soils volumes. Moreover, several […]
Experimental Architecture Studio 2016: Bacteria Hygromophs
Some amazing work from this years 3rd Year Architecture Students. This year they developed prototype actuated building skin components based on a hygromorphic material using bacteria spores. The work was presented on Monday 21st November. The results were astounding – as evidenced by the quality of the video above.
Design of the pressure vessel
As described in the previous post, Computational colloids proposes a genetically modified organism that responds to pressure by synthesising material. A transitional stage involves finding a gene that will respond to pressure, amplify its response, and connect it to a luminescence module. The physical demonstrator is intended to operate, initially, in this transitional stage by […]
Daily Mail article published on Computational Colloids and Construction on Mars
Forget bricks, researchers say ‘smart soil’ injected with GM bacteria could be used to grow the first homes on Mars Genetically engineered bacteria injected into Martian soil could one day be used to grow the foundation for buildings on the red planet. Scientists and architects have teamed up to create a new material known as […]
Genetically Engineered Bacteria Will Get Construction Jobs on Mars
Coverage in Inverse Magazine focuses on the alien world applications of the Computational Colloids project: Every building starts with a strong foundation — pouring concrete into a hole, constructing on top of it. But according to Martyn Dade-Robertson, the buildings on Mars won’t follow that formula, instead relying on colonies of genetically-engineered bacteria to be […]
“Bacteria in soil may stop homes collapsing” Coverage of Computational Colloids in The Times
The times have published an article on the Computational Colloids Project: Houses could be prevented from collapsing by bacteria genetically engineered to stabilise the soil beneath their foundations. When they sensed physical pressure such as subsidence or earthquake, the bacteria would make “bio-cement” to harden the ground underneath the building. Researchers led by Martyn Dade-Robertson, […]
International Press Coverage for Computational Colloids
There have been a number of articles written in response to our Thinking Soils paper including: tiscali news: http://notizie.tiscali.it/scienza/articoli/arriva-cemento-vivente/ l’humanite: http://www.humanite.fr/la-societe-en-bref-613694 Next Big Future: http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/10/genetically-modified-bacteria-could.html
“‘Thinking soil’ made of bacteria could keep buildings from collapsing”
An article on our Computational Colloids project has been published in Science: It can be quite costly, even catastrophic, when the land under a building subsides. But genetically engineered microbes may one day keep that from happening if researchers in the United Kingdom are successful. Inspired by undergraduates who made a concrete-repairing bacterium—dubbed BacillaFilla—for a […]
Bacilla Spore Actuators, Paper
Paper: Bacteria Spores at ACADIA
We have presented out paper on Bacteria Spores at the University of Michigan in Anne Arbor. The abstracts as follows: The last few years has seen an increase in the interest to bring living systems into the process of design. Work with living systems, nonetheless, presents several challenges. Aspects such as access to specialists’ labs, […]
“The Designs of the Natural” Presentation at the Baltic
Martyn Dade-Robertson gave a presentation as part of the playfulness themed session at the Northern Bridge Conference held at the Baltic Gallery for Contemporary Art in Newcastle upon Tyne. The short presentation took a philosophical perspective on the role of Deep Technologies (such as genetic engineering) on Design and Society using Herbert Simon’s “The Sciences of […]
Bacillla Vitruvius, Computational Colloids, Press
Feature Article in Living North Magazine
Our projects on genetically engineering a new generation of building materials have been featured in the November issue of Living North Magazine. The article features and interview with Martyn Dade-Robertson on the future of building materials in the age of biotechnologies focused on our work on Bacteria based materials.
3D Printed Bacteria
To celebrate the Birthday of Professor Jeff Errington (Director of the Centre for Cell and Bacterial Biology) Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa and Luis Hernan were commissioned to make a 3D printed bacteria cell – complete with Chromosome and Flagella. The (non-functioning) bacteria was produced using our new Form Labs printer.
Analysis agarose-type hydrogel as a soil analogue
Computational colloids aims to develop a pressure-sensing bacteria which will ultimately be introduced into the ground in order to synthesise biomaterials and create subsurface structures. Therefore, a uniform distribution of bacteria throughout the selected soil layer is an essential requirement. However, before introducing and testing the bacteria in geomaterials, another compound will be used instead: […]
Article, Computational Colloids
The cities of the future could be built by microbes
Martyn Dade-Robertson’s article for “The Conversation” has just been published. The full text can be read here. An extract of the text is as follows: You might be disappointed to hear that some intriguing underwater structures recently discovered off the Greek island of Zakynthos are not part of the lost city of Atlantis. But the […]
Bacilla Spore Actuators, Bacillla Vitruvius, Computational Colloids, Paper, Synthetic Morphologies
ARQ Special Edition on Biotechnology and the Built Environment
A special issue of Cambridge University Press’s ARQ (Architectural Research Quarterly) on Biotechnology and the Built Environment has just come out. Edited by Martyn Dade-Robertson and Rachel Armstrong and with contributions from International Designers and Researchers. The editorial is as follows: Advances in the biological sciences have, we are told, brought about a biotechnology revolution. […]
DEMO: Computational Colloids Software
In preparation for SEED 2016 we have released this video of our demo modelling application which allows us to test loading different scenarios for a 10x10x10m volume of soil. We visualise both static stresses as well as dynamic pore pressures and use these values to map on to gene expression values related to gene expression […]