BiotA Lab Lab Directors: Professor Marcos Cruz, Richard Beckett
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017
BiotA Lab is an innovative design research platform that merges architecture, biology and engineering. The lab explores new modes of simulation and production in architecture, as well as advances in the field of synthetic biology, biotechnology, molecular engineering and material sciences, and how these subjects are leading towards an ever-increasing multidisciplinary approach to environmental design. The result is a new sense of materiality, new hybrid technologies and unprecedented living forms that are redefining not only building design, but our whole built environment. BiotA Lab’s work is produced between the design studio and laboratory, where innovative building systems are developed with the help of advanced computation. Modelling and simulation tools are implemented in parallel to material testing and organic growth in real laboratory conditions, providing feedback and data for the fabrication of construction components and prototypes. Students and researchers design, grow and build bio-digital prototypes that explore a new ecological model for architecture, responding to specific climates based upon the relationship between environmental conditions and the interfacial properties of materials with microorganisms. In opposition to the traditional complexities and highly costly ‘green architecture’, BiotA explores an alternative symbiosis between buildings and nature that is more computationally sophisticated, and far less costly for buildings in high-density cities. Members of the lab develop unique skills that bridge innovative computational design, materials, fabrication and laboratory protocols. This makes former students and researchers highly desirable in a wide range of architectural practices and laboratories with a particular focus on computational, ecological and bio-integrated design. The cross-collaborative nature of the work allows our students to work individually as cutting edge designers and as part of greater teams that 74
are exploring new design agendas that respond to the ever-increasing environmental challenges of cities. Work produced is also regularly exhibited and presented at international events. This academic year they have included ‘Biofabricate’, Parsons School of Design, New York; ‘SuperMaterial’, Building Centre, London; ‘Ecobuild’, London; Camley Street Nature Park, London; Royal Society, London; Norman Foster Foundation, Madrid; ‘BioTallinn’, Tallinn Biennale, Estonia. Our partners have included ZSL London Zoo; Transport for London; St Anne’s RC Primary School, London; Camley Street Nature Park, London. BiotA Lab includes students from Research Cluster 7 and the Bartlett PhD by Design programme who form part of an internal network of experts in environmentally-led design and novel applications of advanced biotechnologies in architecture, while also developing externallyfunded research.
Image: ‘Acoustic Poché’ (Research Cluster 7), wall prototype with moss growth