The paper examines the concept of Building Science through the role of emerging scientific research and technologies. The paper takes as its starting point the Technology Readiness Strategy which is a way of judging the state of a technology in terms of its readiness for environmental deployment and relevance to industry. The paper argues that this model is limited and uses the example of Synthetic Biology to argue for a type of building science which is both speculative and grounded and which may not lead to immediate or short-term applications but is driven by hypothetical contexts and imagined futures. The paper argues that both scientific knowledge and architectural research may be enhanced through deeper collaboration and gives the example of a project to develop a genetically engineered mechanical sensing bacteria capable of making materials which respond to physical forces in their environment. The paper suggests that, while initiated with an application domain in mind, the knowledge gained from the project has pointed to alternative avenues for creative design explorations. The paper concludes that an alternative form of Building Science may be possible in which the term ‘building’ is both a verb and a noun.

In this paper the authors propose a conceptual model and a bio-computational design method to articulate the world's Urbansphere, suggesting new terms for its co-evolution with the Biosphere.

The proposed model responds to principles of biological self-organisation, and operates by embedding a numerical/computational engine, a living Physarum polycephalum, onto a spatial/morphogenetic substratum, a Satellite driven informational territory. This integration is embodied in the Physarum Machine, a bio-digital design apparatus conceived by the authors and further developed within the Urban Morphogenesis Lab at the UCL in London.

The use of specifically designed apparatus of material computation to demonstrate and solve problems of urban morphogenesis is not new and the authors refer to the work of German Architect Frei Otto and his theory for the occupation and connection of territories.

This research leads to a notion of bio-city of the future where manmade infrastructures and non-human biological systems will constitute parts of a single biotechnological whole. To this respect it can be read as a manifesto for the extension of biotechnology to the scale of the Biosphere (biosphere geo-engineering) by expanding the scope and material articulation of global informational and energetic infrastructures (the internet of things and the internet of energy).

In the tradition of design based research, the paper also suggests an application of the proposed model to a specific case study demonstrating its efficacy in the re-conceptualization of the post-industrial and ecologically depleted landscapes of eastern Arizona. In conclusion the experiment describes the potential of augmenting materiality through sensors and microprocessors so that it would become possible to harvest the computational power latent in micro-organisms like the slime mould.

The dream outlined here is for an era where descriptive computation will be superseded by our capability to simulate and compute through the world that surrounds us.

The few discussions of Alejandro de la Sota's Domínguez House which currently exist cite a retrospective text, dated 1976, where he developed activity and repose as two distinct images within human dwelling. While the Domínguez House has previously been understood in relation to biological rhythms, this paper presents a different reading of this remarkable project – as a deconstruction and reformulation of the contemporary dwelling, one which challenges the inward-looking understanding of human dwelling as shelter. I therefore propose that Alejandro De la Sota was as an architect with a theoretical agenda, far from the conventional view that his was an empirical approach to architecture.

Energy from depleting fossil fuels consumed in the construction and operation of buildings accounts for approximately half of the UK's emissions of carbon dioxide. With global warming increasing, amplifying extreme weather conditions and frequency, buildings can no longer remain static and unresponsive to their surrounding environment. Architecture must become adaptive, reactive to changes in climate, and reducing CO2, not generating it.

As a tree responds to and moderates its surrounding environment, nature can become a key inspiration in developing mechanisms to reduce the impact of climate change and resource depletion. At Astudio, our research looks to incorporate fundamental processes in living and natural systems in the architectural design of responsive surfaces and building services. A form of synthetic biology, these ‘bio-responsive’ designs combine both biological and technical systems, which adapt to, and harvest from, the immediate climatic environment. This paper will demonstrate the potential of synthetic biology in improving the resilience of our built environment, documented through our practice research and our collaborations with industry and academic institutions to date.

Astudio are world-class architects focused on reducing our buildings’ impact on the environment. Our courage in the pursuit new ways to reduce carbon and change behaviors gained us the coveted title of Architectural Practice of the Year in 2012. This unprecedented achievement led us to establish our research and development group, whose role is to investigate new ways of seeing and thinking about the challenges we face in the industry. With this group, we explore visionary concepts that enable us to consider how we may cross boundaries taking us out of architecture and work with different fields of expertise that can help us solve sustainable construction in new ways. We look to the future to propose buildable solutions today.

This paper examines the museum dedicated to Pierre Soulages and its relationship with Soulages, the city of Rodez, the Forirail Garden (which is the site of the museum), and the ideas and practices realised by Catalan architects Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta (RCR). The Musée Soulages is defined by the colour black and the luminous fluidity of steel as designed by RCR Arquitectes; it is also aligned with an environmental ecology that literally and figuratively represents the town of Rodez with its Notre-Dame Cathedral. The central thesis is that the Musée Soulages inducts the visitor into a role of active participation and exchange in an atmosphere of transcendental logic, and, ultimately, a new way to experience black as a colour rather than the lack of one. A visitor to the Musée Soulages becomes part of a theatrical event in which two actors —one French abstract painter, three Catalan architects—communicate in physical terms about the metaphysical environment, and the relationship between the scenographic and the tectonic in architecture. The Musée Soulages is a fascinating metaphorical representation of not only Pierre Soulages's character and his work, but also of the role of the built environment and material culture that is intertwined with the body of Soulages's expressive works. This essay focuses on the material and symbolic gestures created by Pierre Soulages and RCR Arquitectes to maintain and promote their particular world views, and examines the ways in which their expressive mediums and ideas are by turn harmonious and contradictory.

The inhabited lobby is a recurring device in the work of Brady Mallalieu Architects based. It is characterised by a central space in a building which connects different activities physically, visually, acoustically and socially. Notionally a circulation space, it assumes an expanded role, becoming an inhabitable entity in itself and the social focus of a building.

The device has been deployed and developed across a series of built and un-built projects by Brady Mallalieu from 1996 to 2016, ranging in scale from a private family home through various community and educational buildings to a high-density housing complex and city centre masterplan. These projects are reviewed in order to identify the various spatial connections and physical props which constitute the inhabited lobby and its role in enriching the potential for occupation, not only of the lobby itself but also the network of places which it connects together. Its underlying purpose is to make the building more habitable and engage with the unanticipated potential which a more deterministic approach might overlook.

The explorations in this paper inform a discussion on the role of the architect in designing for predicted and unanticipated uses and, specifically, on the potential of the ‘inhabited lobby’ as an architectural device. As much as it is a connecting, in-between space, it is a space in itself.

The Arts Tower at the University of Sheffield was completed in 1961 to designs by Gollins Melvin and Ward and it has been dubbed by English Heritage ‘the most elegant University tower block of its period’. Its renovation, finished in 2012, can be understood as representative of wider debates about the attitudes and values attached to the future use of notable twentieth century modernist architecture. This paper explores the dilemmas and decision-making that characterised the complex negotiation processes involved in deciding how best to renovate this icon of modernity. It highlights the different perspectives and multiple voices within the University and explores the role of architectural values that privilege design in decision-making processes. It may be a familiar tale to anyone who has built or renovated a building involving a complex client and a diverse set of building users.

Through the analysis of four alternative narratives of participants, the complexity of a multi-voiced organisational process is exposed. These four narratives belong to four different players in the process, representing four different cultures. The first accounts for university management (the client); the second the School of Architecture and Department of Landscape (‘end-user’ clients); the third the estates department (the client's representative); and the fourth the expert architectural historian (an academic and end-user). This complexity was represented in the composition of the organisational body in charge of the project and the decision making process.

The images accompanying this paper also provide a short illustrated account of key aspects of the renovation from the perspective of the authors.

In 1911, Stéphane Leduc originally proposed that synthetic biology is a branch of synthetic chemistry that can offer a portfolio of design tools that broaden the possibilities of an aesthetics of life. In the production of generative fields that underpin the synthesis of living systems, lifelike materials may be transfigured and transformed without being constricted by naturalistic expectations. The role of ‘design scrying’ in this exploration is discussed particularly in the generation of images through the interface distortions that occur at the surfaces of ‘dark gels’. These non-deterministic images generating media enable discussion of the aesthetics of life that enable designers to venture beyond the conventions of representation in the natural sciences and synthetic biology, as it is currently practiced in scientific laboratory settings. The implications of this approach are considered through the possibility of using lifelike materials in the choreography of space where lifelike materials, trembling interfaces, and living technologies give rise to the emergence ‘soft living architectures’. These establish the possibility of the development of living spaces that possess some of the properties of living things but may not have the full status of being truly alive.