Living Construction

Martyn Dade-Robertson is Professor of Emerging Technology at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University and the Co-Director of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment. He holds degrees in architecture, architectural computing and synthetic biology.

"This inspiring and informative book asks how we might construct material structures using biology. Its author, an architect and qualified synthetic biologist, is uniquely able to combine ambitious design and down-to-bench realism. Constructed around ideas – of life, of design, of fabrication – the book provides an ideal springboard to a biological architecture grounded, not in conceptual fantasies, but on what might really be achieved."Jamie A. Davies, Professor of Experimental Anatomy, University of Edinburgh"Living Construction is a readable synthesis of important principles for the new field of biodesign, written by someone with graduate training in both architecture and synthetic biology. Dade-Robertson clearly knows the details but has the gift of extrapolating these into accurate yet broad generalities. While design and biology each has its disciplinary theories and practices, this book distills sound principles for their intersection in biodesign, offering a very useful contemporary map for practitioners in the arts and sciences. I especially admire his answer to his own question, 'where is the information in biological assembly?', for how it addresses multiple scales simultaneously. This is a key primer for all students in biodesign."Christina Cogdell, Professor, University of California at Davis

• 1. Introduction 2. The designs of the natural 3. The logic of living assembly 4. Fabrication in the living 5. Conclusion: the craft of living construction