Word of the day: Living Architecture

Word of the day: Living Architecture
A new model of Sustainable architectural practice that directly connects the built environment to nature. The unit of Living Architecture is the Architecture protocell.

See: Architectural Design Magazine, Protocell, Volume 81 Issue 2, March/April 2011, guest-edited by Rachel Armstrong and Neil Spiller

Who's she?
Recently described as a polymath (and a fairy) by Tom Reilly, TED's Community Director, at this year's TED Global Oxford conference, Dr Rachel Armstrong's extensive interdisciplinary practice engages with a fundamental driving principle — the fundamental creativity of science. Her work uses all manners of media to engage audiences and bring them into contact with the latest advances in science and their real potential through the inventive applications of technology, to address some of the biggest problems facing the world today.
Dr Rachel Armstrong's research is about the development of new (green) materials that are programmable, environmentally responsive and have some of the properties of living systems. Although it is at an early stage of development, the research prompts a revaluation of how we think about our homes and cities and raises questions about sustainable development of the built environment. The new materials that she is actively developing in collaboration with international scientists and architects have the potential to form a kind of material language between the built environment and nature. It is proposed that if they are situated on the surface of our buildings, it may be possible to fix carbon and ultimately, direct combat climate change. Dr Rachel Armstrong is currently working to develop an active coasting for buildings called "Biolime" that can fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into a limestone-like solid form, or carbonate. Dr Rachel Armstrong views the development of this product as being the first steps towards engaging practitioners of the built environment in the possibility of carbon capture and storage technologies at the major site of its production — our cities.
See also for more: here.