3D-Printable Life for BioRemediating, Metabolic Architectures • Dennis Dollens 3D-Printable Life for BioRemediating, Metabolic Architectures (original) (raw)

Digital Biomimetics: Microbial Intelligence, Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Architectures

ZQ Journal, 2022

Original at: https://zqjournal.org/editions/zq31.html Proposing that nature is pervasive and that metabolic architectures are embedded in nature, I situate texts and theory as responses to techniques/methods for operational and research procedures. This text is thus a companion to my ongoing Metabolic Architectures campaign for thinking about, theorizing, and designing digital-biomimetic structures dialectically related to biology, technology, intelligence, and environmental bioremediation. In that categorization, theory is integral to the tasks of defining and evolving generative metabolic architectures and urbanisms as equal to the projectʼs drawings and models. I started by building analog branching systems with plant and tree limbs — sometimes skinning their sculptural forms with environmentally strong, handmade yucca paper (Fig 1).This was in the early 2000s. My intention was not to create structural efficiency, but to evolve expressive branching that fused, bonded, and distributed force to create tension/compression, treelike scaffoldings hosting performative surfaces. I drew those structures in Rhinoceros 3D (Rhino) thinking that once structural systems were rooted in digital space, plant algorithms, and living infrastructures, facade panels could be designed and prototyped as bioarchitectural case studies. In return, early works started reconfiguring my thinking about triangulated (truss) systems as irregular, curving and branching units — what I called eTrees (Fig 2). This motivated the transformation of post-and-lintel, load-bearing construction into biomimetically inspired components, based on interwoven vines or intermingled tree branches. And, although far from living, the models took on properties of skeletal organisms with environmental resilience — modules intended to partner with and sequester intelligent organisms capable of autonomous, bioremedial functions. Those trusslike models can be seen as steps toward computational and STL-fabricated eTrees plotted as material and structural concepts. Drawing, modeling, and scanning there after opened as pathways for generative architectures envisioned for machine fabrication and AI-regulated . . . (continued at https://zqjournal.org/editions/zq31.html)