Designing Living Bricks: The Architectural Drawing as Conversational Platform, published in the second issue of the peer-reviewed journal Ardeth (Bottega: Ecology of Design Practice, edited by Albena Yaneva), argues that the architectural drawing, as a technology for thinking and for communicating design ideas between project stakeholders, has remained largely unfazed by the advent of actor-network theory (ANT) and the so-called ‘ethnographic turn.’ Rather than changing to reflect a distributed understanding of agency or the lived ongoingness of projects and buildings, the drawing continues to describe a simple line (from agent to patient) and to congeal into artifacts used to impart commands, increase the architect’s status, or construct brands (the monologue-drawing and the brand-drawing). From the perspective of Living Architecture, an EU-funded research scheme combining architecture, bio-energy and synthetic biology, the paper proposes new modes of drawing (the medium-drawing, the exaptation-drawing and the seed-drawing) that challenge binary abstractions and demand that the architect relinquish a measure of authorship and control to engage in conversations with the other—large and small, disciplinary and nondisciplinary, human and nonhuman, alive and inert. The full paper can be read here.
Simone Ferracina, Living Brick Studies, 2018.
A: Anodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
C: Cathodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
1.
a) The cathode as algal garden (photobioreactor)
b) The cathode as piazza
c) Differentiated anodes and cathodes
d) Homogeneous chambers
2. Orienting the brick: external cathodic garden
3. Orienting the brick: internal cathodic garden
4. Anodic fields
C: Cathodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
1.
a) The cathode as algal garden (photobioreactor)
b) The cathode as piazza
c) Differentiated anodes and cathodes
d) Homogeneous chambers
2. Orienting the brick: external cathodic garden
3. Orienting the brick: internal cathodic garden
4. Anodic fields
Simone Ferracina, Living Brick Studies, 2018.
A: Anodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
C: Cathodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
1. Adjacency in single-thickness membranes
2. Bounding boxes: thickness and porosity variations
3. Material insertions
4. Proton-exchange intensities
5. Studies in membrane geometry
6. Kissing chambers
7. Embracing chambers
8. Structural chassis as membrane
C: Cathodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
1. Adjacency in single-thickness membranes
2. Bounding boxes: thickness and porosity variations
3. Material insertions
4. Proton-exchange intensities
5. Studies in membrane geometry
6. Kissing chambers
7. Embracing chambers
8. Structural chassis as membrane
Simone Ferracina, Living Brick Studies, 2018.
A: Anodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
C: Cathodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
F: Cyanobacteria-based farm module (synthetic microbial consortia)
L: Bacterial-heterotrophic-based labour module (synthetic microbial consortia)
S: Structural scaffolding
1. Radial configuration (central structure, intermediate anaerobic chambers, peripheral gardens)
2. Plug-and-play microbial fuel cell
3. Two-headed brick (double orientation)
4. One-headed brick (single orientation)
5. Mono-pod wall system: to each unit corresponds a specific chamber and function
6. Multi-pod wall system: units includes a range of chambers, materials and functions
C: Cathodic chamber (microbial fuel cell)
F: Cyanobacteria-based farm module (synthetic microbial consortia)
L: Bacterial-heterotrophic-based labour module (synthetic microbial consortia)
S: Structural scaffolding
1. Radial configuration (central structure, intermediate anaerobic chambers, peripheral gardens)
2. Plug-and-play microbial fuel cell
3. Two-headed brick (double orientation)
4. One-headed brick (single orientation)
5. Mono-pod wall system: to each unit corresponds a specific chamber and function
6. Multi-pod wall system: units includes a range of chambers, materials and functions
University of the West of England, Bristol BioEnergy Centre (BBiC), Living Bricks, 2016.