Reprogramming Morphogenesis to Create Self-constructing Living Architectures by Design

At the heart of nature’s ability to develop, maintain, and regenerate its living biological architectures lies a physically embodied morphogenetic code computing form and function in real-time. This corporeal computation grants living architectures the unique ability to build themselves ground up, recover their form in the face of damage, manufacture diverse materials, and exhibit embodied cognition. These awe-inspiring features of biological construction are far-fetched for even today’s state-of-the-art fabrication methods, but I believe this is about to change. We are now at an unprecedented point in history where we are beginning to understand and manipulate the morphogenetic code governing the self-construction of biological structures in nature. This means we can finally go beyond studying and admiring how these living architectures arise in nature—we can directly design them. Conceiving synthetic morphogenesis as a medium for computational fabrication can enable us to create living programmable structures that can predictably build themselves into new architectures by design.