Built to Grow
Blending architecture and biology
We are getting close to the final events of the project. The exhibition opens on the 12th of October at the Angewandte Innovation Laboratory in the centre of Vienna. Our panel guests are confirmed and we are happy to welcome the esteemed speakers; Prof. Rachel Armstrong, Prof. Thomas Speck, Prof. Petra Gruber and Angelo Vermeulen. They will all participate in a final discussion about the project. Currently we are working on wrapping up the project - working hard on the book publication, tuning the mobile cable driven printers, growing mycelium membranes for a small pavilion that will be presented in the exhibition, and keeping fingers crossed that our Magnet Resonance Imaging of the slime mould will come out well…. All this will be presented at the finisage of the exhibition, on 6th November 2015. Furthermore, a book comprising all essential information about the project regarding; aspects of life, the GrAB methodology, our novel approach with the QFD (Quality Function Deployment) and the hands-on Biolab. The core article within the publication titled „Plan not to plan anymore“ contextualizes GrAB within architecture and offers perspectives on where architecture and biology blend. The chapter “Experimentation” reads like a cookbook with recipes on how to grow mycelium, co-design with a slime mould, experiment with hydrogels and analyse trees such as the Euphorbia. Towards the end of the book, one can read the symposium transcripts from the March 2014 event “Biological growth into technology - Between fiction and fact” – a discussion between panellists regarding the ethical values of projects such as GrAB where biology, architecture and technology converge. A manifesto closes the book and can be considered a visionary outlook of what we imagine to become a promising future in our ever-changing world. Please consider yourself invited to our presentation of the project including a discussion 12. October 2014 at 18.00 hrs at the Angewandte Innovation Laboratory.
by Barbara Imhof, 22. August 2015