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Designing with protocells: applications of a novel technical platform - PubMed

  • ️Wed Jan 01 2014

Designing with protocells: applications of a novel technical platform

Rachel Armstrong. Life (Basel). 2014.

Abstract

The paper offers a design perspective on protocell applications and presents original research that characterizes the life-like qualities of the Bütschli dynamic droplet system, as a particular "species" of protocell. Specific focus is given to the possibility of protocell species becoming a technical platform for designing and engineering life-like solutions to address design challenges. An alternative framing of the protocell, based on process philosophy, sheds light on its capabilities as a technology that can deal with probability and whose ontology is consistent with complexity, nonlinear dynamics and the flow of energy and matter. However, the proposed technical systems do not yet formally exist as products or mature technologies. Their potential applications are therefore experimentally examined within a design context as architectural "projects"-an established way of considering proposals that have not yet been realized, like an extended hypothesis. Exemplary design-led projects are introduced, such as The Hylozoic Ground and Future Venice, which aim to "discover", rather than "solve", challenges to examine a set of possibilities that have not yet been resolved. The value of such exploration in design practice is in opening up a set of potential directions for further assessment before complex challenges are procedurally implemented.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

Micrographs and collage.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Complex structures produced by dynamic chemistries may relate to the spatial complexity produced by metabolisms, which enable the evolution of complex structures that are characteristic of organic life.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Landscape formed by osmotic structures that has been produced by dynamic droplets in an oil medium is reminiscent of the micro channels that exist between soil particles. These enable the movement of elemental infrastructures, such as air and water, through the material structure, as well as providing a large surface area for catalytic and metabolic activity.

Figure 4
Figure 4

This diagram depicts dynamic droplets as “actors” that operate within the many variable influences encountered in their oil field as an ontolological “map” of events. While the diagram is drawn as a 2D topology, the possible events within the field are manifold and open up multi dimensional spaces through their interactions with, continuous, multiple contingencies that shape the evolution of the system.

Figure 5
Figure 5

Oyster-like, thick, osmotic structure produced by dynamic droplets.

Figure 6
Figure 6

Thick, osmotic structures being produced by dynamic droplets that are moving away from their deposits and producing “marine landscapes”.

Figure 7
Figure 7

Modified Bütschli droplets respond to environmental conditions in flasks that are open to the air. Incubator Flasks were suspended in the Hylozoic Ground matrix and positioned over light emitting diodes (LEDs) to capture heat and light from the activated cybernetic matrix.

Figure 8
Figure 8

This version of Conway’s Game of Life has striking homologies with the Bütschli droplet system in that agents are producing self-evolving traces in their environment.

Figure 9
Figure 9

Hylozoic Ground installation, Canadian Pavilion, Venice is a cybernetic matrix that integrates a range of different “organ” and “tissue” types, such as swallowing tubes (tapered cylindrical structures to the right of the photograph) and sound organs (clustered leaf-like structures in the centre of the photograph). The challenge was to design a set of dynamic chemistries that would aesthetically and functionally complement the soft mechanical systems. A centrally placed (yellow) chemical organ can be seen centre field.

Figure 10
Figure 10

View underneath Venice’s foundations that stand upon woodpiles demonstrating the potential action of a city scale morphological computer composed of smart, programmable droplets. This speculative assemblage-based technology proposes to harness the collective action of light sensitive droplets that are programmed to move towards the darkened foundations of the city to grow an artificial limestone reef. This structure aims to gradually spread the point load of the city over a much broader base than offered by the narrow woodpiles as well as providing new ecological niches for the marine wildlife.

Figure 11
Figure 11

View of programmable droplets coming to rest underneath Venice’s foundations as their light sensitive metabolism reaches equilibrium and activates a second metabolic process that enables the droplets to use local minerals and dissolved carbon dioxide to grow a solid, reef-like structure.

Figure 12
Figure 12

Droplet assemblages, which grow the structural and physiological framework of an artificial reef under the city, may produce porous, pumice-like formations over time that reflect mineral compositions through their coloured layers, like stromatolites. The resultant architecture does not obey a top-down paradigm but is codesigned through the entangled metabolic interactions of marine and human populations.

Figure 13
Figure 13

Stromatolite-like formations in the Venetian canals are shaped over time through the multiple interactions of heterogeneous actants and assemblages to produce mineralised material. This process already takes place within the waterways of Venice. An assemblage-based droplet technology is anticipated to augment this process. The collective action of programmable, life-like chemistries may produce thrombolites within the shallow waters of the Venice lagoon.

Figure 14
Figure 14

This façade designed for the International Building Association in Hamburg houses green microalgae, which produce biomass from carbon dioxide and sunlight. This product is collected and in turn, is used to create heat for the building.

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