Page 45 - JCAU-5-1

Journal of Chinese

Architecture and Urbanism

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Microbial technologies: Toward a regenerative

architecture

Rachel Armstrong*
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas, Ghent/Brussels, KU
Leuven, Flanders, Belgium
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Regenerative Architecture)

Abstract

This paper examines the applications of microbial technologies in regenerative
architecture, which enliven the built environment and its territories by establishing a
different relationship between waste, energy, human inhabitation, and microbial “life.”
The specific platform discussed is centered on the microbial fuel cell (an ecologically
“just” platform that provides bioelectrical energy, data, and chemical transformation
from human waste streams), which are exemplified by a range of demonstrators that
establish transactional systems between humans and microbes. These simultaneously
“sustainable” and “smart” demonstrators establish operational principles for the wider
deployment and uptake of microbial technologies in an urban context. The city-scale
implementations of these regenerative systems have the potential to establish the
foundations for “living cities,” which are fundamentally bioremediating, resulting in an
overall increase in liveliness of our habitats and living spaces.
*Corresponding author:
Rachel Armstrong
(Rachel.armstrong@kuleuven.be) Keywords: Microbes; Regenerative architecture; Microbial fuel cells; Bioremediating;
Bioelectricity; Microbial commons
Citation: Armstrong, R. (2023),
Microbial technologies: Toward a
regenerative architecture. Journal of
Chinese Architecture and Urbanism,
5(1):157. 1. Introduction
https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.157
The built environment is everything people live in and around, for example, housing,
Received: February 11, 2023
historic buildings, transport infrastructure, services networks, cultural heritage, or
Accepted: March 17, 2023 public spaces, and uses vast resources accounting for half of all extracted material.
Published Online: April 20, 2023 The construction sector is responsible for over a third of the European Union (EU)’s
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). total waste generation, and 40% of our energy consumption is by buildings (European
This is an open-access article Commission, 2020), including historic buildings and those designated as cultural
distributed under the terms of the heritage. Furthermore, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) resulting from material
Creative Commons Attribution-
Non-Commercial 4.0 International extraction, manufacturing of construction products, construction, and renovation of
(CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all buildings, amount to around 5–12% of total national GHGe (European Parliament,
non-commercial use, distribution, 2023). The built environment is undergoing a rapid and irreversible transformation,
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is challenging our understanding of how we make and maintain our buildings, which will
properly cited. affect every citizen in unprecedented ways. It is essential to imagine a built environment
Publisher’s Note: AccScience that works for people and nature, which challenges our preconceptions about how
Publishing remains neutral with our cities are made and inhabited, while supporting the Sustainable Development
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional Goals (SDGs) (SDG 7, SDG 9, SDG 10, SDG 11, SDG 12, and SDG 15). Regenerative
affiliations. architecture proposes a change of approach toward the built environment by moving away

Volume 5 Issue 1 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.157