There’s a tendency when you mention genetic engineering to think of something more severe, like cloning. Is it more about manipulating how something is put together, such as plastic?

There are two innovations that are now coming online in synthetic biology that are good references for architecture. One is that scientists have figured out how to manipulate some of the genes in yeast—not cloning in the way we think of a sheep, but rather in terms of microorganisms—and manipulate them in this cool way to get it to go into a fermenter. But instead of creating beer, it would create a new, low-cost, anti-malaria drug. This is technology that’s coming onto the market now and it’s the same kind of thing that allows scientists to manipulate the genes of bacteria to grow biofuels that don’t require petroleum.

Plastics could be a few steps away—building materials that are made through genetically modified bacteria, for example. The really interesting connection to sustainability for me is that this could allow for the creation of very high-performance plastics without the use of petroleum. What some people speculate about the future of this technology is that it could lead to a transition from a petroleum economy to a glucose economy because the raw material you need to feed these bacteria to grow new plastics is a source of sugar, like sugar cane, which could [in turn] reduce carbon emissions over the life cycle.

In 2008, your project “Living City” proposed façades with sensors that open and close louvers based on air quality levels. Your other work includes installations, such as “Amphibious Architecture” in New York’s East River in 2009. Is it possible to move beyond temporary installations to more day-to-day applications similar to “Living City”?

That’s an important aspect of our research. We think of our projects as futuristic, but at the same time we want to explore ideas through full-scale functioning prototypes, not through technologies that are far in the future. When we’re making prototypes, we’re trying to explore a new idea that also could have relevance in the near term for a large amount of buildings.

There are a couple of ways that these applications might translate into mainstream buildings. One is represented by the “Amphibious Architecture” project. That was an installation and it was fairly small scale. We were testing out the functionality. We’re now working with the city of New York to create a much larger, permanent version of that project for Pier 35 in Manhattan. It’s an example of where the prototype was the proof of concept that helped lead to a construction that is now more permanent.

I think in the case of “Living City,” we were experimenting with technology that was available and imagining the new possibilities. If there are already a lot of sensors in buildings, and this is happening more and more, what might happen if buildings could share that sensor data with one another rather than just use it locally? Our immediate test of that was what if a building façade could have embedded sensors that could detect air quality to open and close louvers based on air quality measured locally as well as from other buildings in the neighborhood? What if a building is sensing things and doing things in an urban environment and sharing this data?

Since then, there have been some interesting developments related to energy. If every building shares its energy usage data with every other building, perhaps as a whole the buildings can cooperate to use less energy during times of peak demand.

Living City (New York and San Francisco, 2008) from David Benjamin on Vimeo.