Rachel Armstrong, a Fellow at the University of London's Bartlett School of Architecture, describes the mixing of architecture and biology for environmental remediation. Trained as a medical doctor, Armstrong has proposed using living materials to rescue the city of Venice from sinking, and using revolutionary new paints on buildings to capture carbon emitted from street traffic.
Bio
Rachel Armstrong
Dr Armstrong is an interdisciplinary researcher who has trained as a medical doctor and tutors fifth year MArch students in the modification of biological systems for their technical dissertations at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
She has also collaborated with international artists such as Helen Chadwick, Orlan and Stelarc who engaged with the technologies of extreme body modification and the impact of extreme environments on biological systems in projects that exemplified her broader interest in the way in which the environment can directly shape organisms through biotechnological interventions.
Her work currently focuses on the development of Metabolic Materials for Living Buildings where she works in collaboration with international architects and scientists.
Art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. The practice of architecture emphasizes spatial relationships, orientation, the support of activities to be carried out within a designed environment, and the arrangement and visual rhythm of structural elements, as opposed to the design of structural systems themselves (seecivil engineering). Appropriateness, uniqueness, a sensitive and innovative response to functional requirements, and a sense of place within its surrounding physical and social context distinguish a built environment as representative of a culture's architecture. See alsobuilding construction.
Study of living things and their vital processes. An extremely broad subject, biology is divided into branches. The current approach is based on the levels of biological organization involved (e.g., molecules, cells, individuals, populations) and on the specific topic under investigation (e.g., structure and function, growth and development). According to this scheme, biology's main subdivisions include morphology, physiology, taxonomy, embryology, genetics, and ecology, each of which can be further subdivided. Alternatively, biology can be divided into fields especially concerned with one type of living thing; for example, botany (plants), zoology (animals), ornithology (birds), entomology (insects), mycology (fungi), microbiology (microorganisms), and bacteriology (bacteria). See alsobiochemistry; molecular biology.
Re Venice idea, I wonder how much thought has been put into preventing these protocells spreading into the outside world where they may cause far great problems than Venice sinking?
Venice is sinking because of its location. The Adriatic is expanding and the rift is where Venice sits. The separation creates a slump which is causing Venice to sink. The same case exists in New Orleans. the Louisiana Coast and the Channel Coast of Britain. See; www.widemargin2000.com. Richard Guy
Great technology! But I have some perplexities... I'm a venician and as I know the Venice is sinking for two main reasons:
1) the increasing level of the sea
2) the slow fall of the entire "pianura padana" region due to subsidence, increased, in the case of Venice, by the extraction of natural gases from the deposits under the venice lagoon bottom.
The problem raised up in the interview (the degradation of wooden posts in the city's foundations) is, in my opinion, a minor problem. In the presented animation is possible to see the wooden posts completely immersed into the water (around minute 2.36). It is not completely true. The Venice' foundations are not like this, we are not on "stilettos", but already on a sort of platform. The posts are completely immersed in the muds, and the buildings are placed on the muds reinforced by the posts. Moreover, since the posts are completly covered by muds in a anoxic condition, they are already almost fossilized. The technology illustrated here is more likely to be use for the "bricole" (as shown on minute 2.58), the posts that we used to link the boats, but I think that this kind of application is far from the idea to save Venice from sinking!
member. 
