Nanotechnology and Architecture: New Materials and Responsive Designs, Guide, Progetti e Ricerche di Architettura

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The advent of nanotechnology enables us

to scrutinise biological particles and

processes at a scale never realised before.

Rachel Armstrong looks at nanoparticles’

relationship to biological processes and

the subsequent implications for the

development of new responsive materials

for architectural design.

Anders Christiansen, Homeostatic Membrane, 2008 Homeostasis is the physiological process by which the internal system of architecture (humidity, temperature, acid-base balance) is maintained at equilibrium, despite variations in the external conditions. The homeostatic membrane acts as the overlap between the external conditions and internal requirements of a building. Drawing on current research in the fields of bioengineering and nanotechnology, it hosts a biosynthetic ecology of biological matter and technological mechanisms. This includes vessels of biological matter, flexible tissue, vent corridors, dynamic probes and a ‘vascular’ system connecting the vessels, along with a responsive field of detectors and actuators, such as water collection/purification systems, micro algae bioreactors and photovoltaic cells that are assimilated in the very ‘flesh’ of the Homeostatic Membrane.

At the start of the 21st century we are in a unique position with respect to the available technologies to evaluate biological processes with scrutiny never encountered before, and understand them from a bottom-up approach that revolutionises the future potential of architectural design. New visualisation techniques, such as the revolutionary atomic force microscope, allow us to study molecules that exist at a few billionths of a metre. This is the nanoscopic level, which has eluded scrutiny until recently since its scale exists at the wavelengths of visible light and cannot be seen using traditional visualisation techniques. In 1959 the prophetic Richard Feynman proposed that we could arrange atoms in most of the ways permitted by physical law;^1 and 27 years later K Eric Drexler fleshed out this vision when he published Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, in which he took inspiration from biological systems to predict the engineering of molecular-scale machines, termed molecular assemblers, that could precisely manipulate and assemble atoms, to create minuscule robots that could carry out industrial-scale functions.^2 Intriguingly, at the nanoscopic scale, molecules exhibit surprising properties as their unique size influences their behaviour, and materials exhibiting these characteristics are called metamaterials. DaimlerChrysler is working on a new generation of thermoplastics that have been modified by the addition of nanoparticles in a manufacturing process that promises to revolutionise vehicle manufacture and defy traditional Newtonian models of behaviour.^3 Atoms, on the other hand, obey their own physical laws that inhabit the strange world of quantum physics. Uniquely, molecules that lie within the nanometre range possess intermediate properties that are almost impossible to predict. For example, the traditionally inert element gold becomes a catalyst, while changing the size of a particle can alter its colour and electrical resistance unexpectedly. Nanotechnology can even be employed to improve upon the metamaterials of the natural world to create enhanced, biodegradable woods and foam. Lars Berglund is leading the Biomime project where researchers harvest different types of nanocomposites such as wood and cellulose to improve on their natural properties to make high- performance films, foam and aerogels.^4 The field of plasmonics is a fascinating area of nanotechnological research where optical signals are transmitted through minuscule structures and can render objects invisible. In 2006, John B Pendry of Imperial College London and his colleagues demonstrated theoretically that a shell of plasmonic metamaterials with unique optical properties could reroute electromagnetic waves travelling through it, thus creating a cloaking device. 5 It is also possible to combine biological and artificial molecules to create new functional devices at the nano-scale level. Carlo D Montemagno of the University of Cincinnati created an 11-nanometre rotary motor from a bacterial protein and a metallic nanorod that was powered by adenosine triphosphate, the source of chemical energy in cells, and rotated eight times a second. 6 Jim Tour, Chao Professor of Chemistry and director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Rice University’s Richard E Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, took the concept of a molecular engine one step further

The future implications for architecture in terms of nano-scale modifications to living processes are exciting in that they will form the basis of designer-led, genuinely responsive materials with innovative properties that will have a broad range of applications in our experience of the built environment. 4

Notes

1. Richard Feynman’s original lecture ’There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’ can be found at www.its.caltech.edu/~feynman/plenty.htm.
2. K Eric Drexler,Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, Anchor Books (New York), 1986.
3. Daimler Chrysler, ‘DaimlerChrysler, suppliers invent recyclable thermoplastic’. See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3381/is_199912/ai_n
4. For more on Lars Berglund’s Biomime project, see http://www.biomime.org/archive/june_eng.pdf.
5. For more on John B Pendry’s Invisibility Cloak Technology, see http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/3076.
6. For more on Carlo D Montemagno’s bacterial protein motor and rod, see http://www.springerlink.com/content/x517602072016u67/.
7. For more on Jim Tour’s NanoCar, see http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/cars/nano-car.asp.
8. For more on Ben L Feringa’s molecular rotating motor, see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7081/full/440163a.html.
9. For more on Nadrian Seeman’s flexible DNA experiments, see http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auth:Seeman,NC.
10. For more about the functional integration between inorganic nanotechnology and the biological world, see ‘Neuron forms links with silicon nanowires’ at http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn9838.
11. TC&A’sMEART project can be found at http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/.

Text © 2008 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 86-7 © Anders Christiansen; p 88(t), 89 © Guy Ben-Ary, photos Phil Gamben; p 88(c) © Guy Ben-Ary, photo Dr Steve Potter; p 88(b) © Guy Ben-Ary, photo SARG and the Potter Lab

MEART – The Semi Living Artist, ‘Australian Culture Now’, Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, Australia, 2004 The Melbourne installation used a control paradigm based on population vector algorithms. This uses information from all areas in the neurons, even those that show a weak response to the stimulus. The robotic arms are drawing, and behind them is a computer screen showing a photo of a man’s face, a pixellated black-and-white image, a scrolling text box and some graphs. The only other item on the table is a camera that looks down over the arms at the picture they are drawing. A large screen on the wall behind the table shows a graph, a representation that looks like a glacial landscape.

Position sensors were integrated into the robotic arm for the Melbourne exhibition to further improve the control system. The sensors communicated with the software through a microcontroller system to make the positioning of the arm more accurate than before.

MEART – The Semi Living Artist, ‘Biofeel: A New Breed of Artist’, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, Australia, 2002 The MEART robotic arm drawing as part of the Biennale for Electronic Arts Perth. In this performance the robot became a geographically detached artist, its ‘brain’ and ‘body’ interacting through the Internet (TCP/IP) in real time.