At Frank Lloyd Wright's home, a lab for world-class architecture (Photos)

CNET - OAK PARK, Ill. -- Before Frank Lloyd Wright became the most famous architect in the world, he was a struggling employee who had to borrow money from his boss to build his own house.

That house, and the adjoining professional studio, make up the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in this posh suburb of Chicago. I got a chance for a behind-the-scenes tour Monday as part of Road Trip 2013, and as a Wright fan who has toured other favorites like Taliesin West in Arizona, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, and the Marin County Civic Center in California, this was a treat.

 While most Chicago buildings used standard red bricks on their facades, and relegated the use of earth-tone Chicago bricks to the side, Wright favored such tones, and decided he wanted to use the material on the front of his home. He also wanted sets, or bands, of windows that were side by side, rather than separated. And he chose a front door that was much wider than the norm.    More

Creating buildings that repair themselves

(Image: TED/Robert Leslie)

New Scientist - A researcher specialising in architecture and synthetic biology, Rachel Armstrong imagines a future with building materials that function as part of living systems. New Scientist caught up with her to talk about her new TED book, Living Architecture.

What is wrong with today’s architecture?

The issue with modern architecture is that it is imagined through the framework and technology of the machine. We even think of ourselves as machines. Machines are good at taking resources and making objects but they’re impenetrable to the environment and they are extremely wasteful.

Currently, the best our architecture can be is carbon-neutral. You are looking to nature to go one step further?

If we change our world view from being centred on machines to being centred on ecology, it starts to become a lot easier to imagine what kinds of technology might complement this approach. The natural world is full of examples: algae technology, the use of trees like baobabs as toilets and the living root bridges of Cherrapungi, north eastern India. But they don’t fit well into an urban environment and they don’t respond fast enough for the lifestyle we demand.

Are you advocating we go back to some bucolic agrarian-based existence?

Not at all – more like a symbiotic approach between nature and existing structures and technology.

What sort of technologies do you have in mind?

I have been looking at applying synthetic biology to environmental problems. There are two ways of doing this. One is to modify existing biology, such as algae, using extreme environmental techniques. The other is to build artificial cells by mixing ingredients. With colleagues at the Southern University of Denmark and the European Centre for Living Technology based in Venice, Italy, I have been looking into materials that exhibit some life-like properties. These “protocells” are droplets of oil into which we grind a mineral such as calcium chloride, or copper sulphate to make a paste. The oil acts like a slow-release container that lets go of the mineral over time. It’s a similar idea to the liposome technologies that are used in anti-aging creams.                     More