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Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism SynBio-architecture: BioSynth Towers Project

perceived strong country or society conquers a militarily (Porcar et al., 2015) and even tackled problems that were
weaker but culturally more influential civilization or not anticipated before.
society. The typical outcome over time is that despite early The time is ripe to move from technification of biology
successes of the invaders, the more elaborated culture of (as ambitioned by synthetic biology) towards biologization
those invaded takes over and eventually prevails. Along of technology (as we advocate will eventually happen).
the line, we entertain that technological attempts to This trend is growingly making it in the synthetic biology
subdue nature to our own benefit will eventually change literature (Castle et al., 2021) and prospects of merging
to incorporate many of the strategies and solutions that top-down genetic engineering with evolutionary tinkering
biological evolution has already provided or can provide to are getting at hand. But how do all these affect modern
complex problems that are beyond our current capabilities architecture?
(de Lorenzo, 2018).
4. Biology conquering architecture
One archetypal example of technical leveraging of
biological phenomena is the adoption of evolutionary As mentioned above, after millennia of improvised
algorithms for the optimization of antennas for NASA’s utilization of naturally occurring construction materials
spacecraft (Lohn et al., 2005). The rational design of such for building short-lived human habitats on the mere
antennas is challenging as so many parameters are at stake. basis of trial-and-error, the birth of Western architecture
However, evolutionary design techniques can provide can be traced to the time when Euclidean geometry
workable solutions by exploring the design space and was incorporated to edifice design (Di Cristina, 2002).
delivering automatically applicable results. Note that in An additional and characteristically human attribute
these cases, the design principles are not rational but rely was also the integration of aesthetic features, so that
on massive diversification-selection cycles that recreate (according to Vitruvius 80–15 BC), the functionality
Darwinian evolution. In a different but related frame, the should be combined with durability and beauty (Kruft,
first synthetic biology wave ambitioned to dominate extant 1994). Vitruvius also argued that architectural perfection
biological systems by adopting engineering concepts and is reached when buildings embody the laws and shapes
methodologies. Yet, 20 years later it seems clear that such of the natural cosmic order, as exposed by mathematics,
a straight projection of one thing on the other has not physics, and geometry. No wonder that for much of
delivered as expected (Meng & Ellis, 2020). history, buildings have been based on such principles.
Native forms of natural materials are eligible as resources
Biological systems inherently mutate and evolve for construction, for example, stones, tree trunks, and
(Cardinale & Arkin, 2012), not only when submitted so on, were reshaped to follow geometrical and physical
to changing environmental conditions, but also often standards necessary for fitting a preset assembly plan.
through mere genetic drift. Moreover, the performance of Virtually nearly every building erected in the past 20
biological devices is characteristically context-dependent, centuries has followed such norms, all submitted to
which leads to the emergence of new interactions and straight lines and other purely geometrical shapes. Even
properties. Finally, living systems grow and reproduce. the plastic exuberance of the baroque period limited
These qualities dramatically depart from those of human- utilization of non-linear forms to adornment of otherwise
engineered objects (Hanson & Lorenzo, 2023). One way to purely geometrical structures–to be soon replaced by an
move ahead is trying to suppress such undesirable features ensuing bare neoclassical style. At the core of the breach
for making biology easier to engineer (Calvert, 2010). This between such types of architecture and the occupation of
involves, for example, orthogonalization of genetic devices, the 3D space by biological structures lies the connectivity
mitigation of evolutionary potential, digitalization of among the components. Purely geometrical forms entered
regulatory components and others. However, we speculate in hard materials enable the capture and design of habitable
that efforts to defeat such inherent characteristics of living space with a minimal number of elements and the least
systems will not ultimately solve the problem. What to do total of connections amid them. The downside of the same
then? In this case, the advice attributed to Saint Lupe of is frailty to environmental changes–as clearly shown by
Troyes (383–479 AD) when facing Attila the Hun on his the sensitivity (and frequent collapse) of many classical
way to the conquest of Rome could be applied here: “… buildings when facing natural calamities (Al-Momani &
if you cannot defeat your enemy, join him…”. Instead of Harrald, 2003). In contrast, biological 3D structures are
treating to suppress upfront undesirable qualities that are shaped by malleable and highly connected parts, which
inherent to living systems, the way to go might be to make certainly complicate their rational design but often endow
an alliance of what the other side has to offer and learning extraordinary robustness to the final object. Things
how such side has developed solutions by other means started to change, however, by the late 19 century, the
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Volume 5 Issue 3 (2023) 4 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0619