*I have to say I really enjoy watching Dr. Rachel Armstrong spew a protocell rant. I'm kinda getting used to 'em now, and, really, their charm is growing on me.... kinda like, uh, weird genetically-altered spores of some kind.
"I can't see how "protocells" could ramp up from the existing architecture stock – the installed base has been the bane of visionary architecture from the year zero – but an article like this is at least as interesting as a Norman Bel Geddes giant flying-wing aircraft from the 1930s. It's some truly visionary, head-spinning, conceptually out-there writing about, well, architecture.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679275/a-trip-to-the-living-city-of-the-future
(...)
"Protocell technologies function in a dynamic and useful way in conditions that are hostile to biology. The recent chemical spill from an alumina plant in Ajka in western Hungary–where an avalanche of toxic, flesh-corroding, alkaline, chemical waste burst from a reservoir (((oh come on who can't like this apocalyptic outburst among the biotech musings))) about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the capital Budapest–affected an area of 40 square kilometers (15.4 square miles). Seven villages and towns were affected, including Devecser, where the torrent was 2 meters deep. The heavy contamination means that almost an inch of soil has to be removed from the whole of the contaminated region. Even after neutralization of the chemicals, dust from the affected area is likely to pose a cancer risk to residents. This is a situation in which nonbiological protocell technologies could be used to perform remedial functions under conditions that would destroy most natural organisms.
(((It's also just plain typical of former-Communist material culture, and it's kinda like claiming that protocells could re-knit Chernobyl... come to think of it, we got an architecture-fiction movie about that subject just a few posts down! Do you suppose these British people know one another? Perhaps this is an important creative movement of some kind!)))
"Protocell coatings could be designed to neutralize the effect of the alkali through application to building exteriors once the main spill has been neutralized. Since protocells are active under even very strongly alkaline conditions, they could be used to treat unneutralized alkali that is carried on contaminated dust from the site of the disaster into living spaces. In other toxic situations synthetic biologies, which can tolerate extreme environmental conditions, could also act as remediating display systems to warn residents about the presence of dangerous toxins, especially when these chemicals cannot be smelled or seen, like radioactive waste (for example, genetically modified radioactivity-resistant bacteria could be engineered to express a fluorescent gene in the presence of nuclear waste).
"Living technologies may ultimately have the ability to change the fundamental relationship between human development and the environment..."
