JONO_COATES

technology_DNA

30 years is a long time where a lot of change can happen. Our climate is not just the only thing that is drastically changing. Technology is advancing at an exponential rate. One exciting aspect amongst this progressing technology is DNA.

All Living things have DNA. All living things are made up of Cells. Each Cell is a factory that performs functions vital for life. A cell is constructed of building blocks called protein molecules. They produce energy and transport nutrients. Amino acids are assembled to make up a protein, arrangement of these Amino acids determine a proteins shape and function. This operating system of assembling functions or instructions is called DNA.

DNA is made up of a string of bases and can be read as a ‘code’.  The sequence of these bases determines a cells ‘code’.

With emerging digital technologies it is beginning to make it possible to arrange a cells ‘code’ and essentially direct its functions or instructions.

Simultaneously as this digital technology advances a new breed of designers will emerge, DNA Designers.

These designers will have the ability to program the exact code of a cell, ‘designing’ its functions such as how it grows, how it reproduces, how it utilises energy and even how it processes and produces useful compounds like water and oxygen.

With this type of technology there is potential to produce designed living things such as living products and architecture.

These types of ‘living’ products and architecture will open up a new element to design. Designs will grow, evolve and change over time, adapt to their surroundings and even create their own habitat.

 

As the sea level rises, water will start to become a part of the city of Wellington. This would be the perfect habitat where these types of products and architecture could exist.

By Wellington’s architecture becoming ‘living’, a completely sustainable city will emerge where buildings would be self sufficient, able to use the resources around them to survive and supply their surroundings with their own resources.

Wellington will become an evolving city.

One example of how the buildings could utilise the rising sea level could be through water pollination to reproduce. This is where a building disperses its DNA to connect with another buildings DNA to form new DNA or ‘new architecture’.

DNA DESIGN//DESIGNING A PRODUCTS LIFE.

This new form of Design will create a new form of
products that will be flexible and adaptable. Just like
any living organisms, these products will grow and
evolve, adapt to their surroundings, adapt to thier
Habitat. Theseaspects will be key features in designing
where the design will have the influence in how these
functions occur.

example:
Designing a building for Wellington and its changing
environment such as Sea Level Rise.

Design the building to utilise water as a form of energy.

Design to produce compound fuels useful for light.

Design to reproduce by water pollination.

DNA DESIGN//A NEW GENERATION OF DESIGNERS.

With emerging digital technologies it is begining to
make it possible to direct this operating system and
construct its functions.

With this advance in digital technology a new breed
of designers will emerge, DNA Designers.

Designers currently design products in the digital
and physical that are very much static (non-living).

With the ability to construct DNA, designers will
have the ability to design how a product grows,
reproduces, utilises energy and produces useful
compounds such as fuel. A designer will be able
to design a products ‘Life’.

Code//Between Opperation and Narration_Review

_Every Living organism contains DNA

_DNA contains genetic instructions used in development and functioning

_DNA holds information//Code

with advancing digital and science technologies architecture and design is becoming a place of great exploration. 

“…in the future the built object will no longer be an instantaneous state of  temporary shape fixed in time, but the building of the future may even be capable of changing its form in real time.”

Andrea Gleiniger and George Vrachliotis in Code make the statement here that today the material make up of the object is static, but with revolutionary technolgy begining to appear through synthetic biology and nanotechnology it may be foreseeable that the built environment that surrounds us will become living, holding its own DNA, its own Code.

Maybe in the Future buildings and everything once man made will become organic/living, self sufficient and live not for us but with us.

Gleiniger and Vrachliotis also express the notion of self-reproduction and that the purpose of reproduction in a living organism is not to create an offspring that is exactly inherit of itself but to be diverse of which its race can evolve. They believe DNA has a role in creating this.

“self-reproduction as it implements a process of development that not only accepts, but also seeks variation and difference form generation to generation.”

Living organisms reproduce to Evolve.