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ARCHITECTURE HAS ORGASMS

8 am. I plug myself to the rounded breakfast table, to establish vital connection with my kitchen furniture. I biotransmit to it my early mood and good morning wishes. The table is still waking up, like me. I touch its soft surface: the usual start of my daily greeting ritual. My bleary eyes wander. I observe that I am running out of storage in my kitchen: I must remember to start growing a new shelf. Architectural bodies are our buildings these days. Their conception and construction are only a fraction of their life cycle, similarly to what our own gestation period means in our lifetime. Buildings are now born to the world and their users. They are given a name. Their birth date is honored through big celebrations. They get a harmonious presentation into society, where a building is not understood as a product of consumption, but as a living organism. Users become family and colleagues, guiding each built body along life. When spatial architects, bio-architects, scientists and technology engineers plan buildings, it is uncertain how these will look like. They guide the process, but since construction is based on organic growth principles, there is no absolute control on the form. It is possible to plan its features, but with no precision on the final shapes. Anyhow, nobody really cares about buildings looks nowadays: beauty is inherent in their nature and performance. Buildings grow, from inside out. Their spatial conditions are revealed during a slow process of materialization. Architectural planning unveils unique potentials, specific for each case, simultaneously contemplating environment, economy, social chances and temporality. Complexity is embraced and understood as opportunity. Materials are not simply fabricated as in the old industrial period; in our current era, they just become. They are grown and harvested in Biomaterial Farms. They reach the desired shapes and scales along slow processes, to achieve different needs. Organic shapes are not the simple product of a designers vision, like in former times, but are the outcome of biological building methods. Form follows life. Structural and finishing materials may be grown now as seamless elements. Biomaterials are grown layer by layer, using base substances that are later transformed by the right microorganisms to reach their mature state. These living culture used in bioconstruction may, for example, make a soft surface get hard or shiny. They help to constantly adapt the color, mood and temperature of each biomaterial to external weather, light, humidity or temperature, as well as to peoples emotional conditions. Bacteria are also used to integrate exterior and interior accessories as continues appendices. Biomaterial experts transmit the desired protocols to specialized bacteria. Large amounts of data and instructions are stored in each living cell during a biotechnical programming process. This allows growing systems made out of multiple parts, which share the same DNA but own a unique final shape. They are usually assembled on site using glue-cells, a sealing techno-organism able to grow joints. Current building processes take some time until they reach mature growth level. But we understood long ago that this slow- construction method is, in the long run, more sustainable and economically more productive.

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There is also a large industry dedicated to physical and emotional Building Therapy. Architectural Laboratories develop types of microorganisms and bacteria able to heal building parts and pathologies. Sensitivity Engineers are required to periodically review buildings and their parts, in order to detect and solve any emotional issues along their daily life. As we long know by now, our built environment, as we humans do, is subject to affection. And its emotional condition will activate ours, in a reciprocal flow.

As in every living organism, building parts slowly deteriorate till they die. Full demolition is uncommon these days, but when it happens it comprises a ritual of transition from live to death, in a let-go dismounting ceremony that celebrates the buildings life contribution to the community. And they go back to being earth, just like we do. It seems far away when architecture used to be rational, static, mainly functional. Urbanization understood as a polluting and standardized business: we then fed weapons of bliss obstruction. Social, cultural, technological and biological synergy has helped it to evolve to todays awakening: a communion of the natural and man-made. The environment we live, consciously alive.

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