Application scenarios

alternative ways to integrate the Living Architecture system into the urban-built-environment

Credit: Living Architecture Consortium, animation: Damjan Minovski for LIQUIFER Systems Group, 2019

In the scenarios, alternative ways to integrate the Living Architecture system into the urban-built-environment are explored. It is envisioned that Living Architecture technologies shall be progressively developed and implemented, in alignment with the established frameworks and benchmark targets for a Sustainable Future formulated by the European Union, for ten-, twenty-, and thirty-year outlook periods.
By 2050, the Living Architecture system is envisioned as an integral component of waste management and energy production at the city scale, fully embedded in a circular economy, based on renewable resources.

For scenario development, different variables are considered for the successful implementation of Living Architecture into the urban environment over time, including; existing building stock and building typology in the EU, architecture design and visionary futures, user-type and user-type-interfaces, waste management, resource use, and EU legislation.
The Living Architecture project uses living things and their regenerative
powers to process waste material in homes. A wide range of organic waste streams that are generated in buildings as by-products of human activities are considered as potential feedstock, or resource for the system.

A specific challenge to the application of Living Architecture into buildings,
is the integration of these living micro-organisms. Humans are in fact animals, living in a microbial world however, and for far-too-long we have fought against the same microbes we have evolved with through the sterilization of our environments. The idea of the Living Architecture project, is to re-introduce those microbes back into our world to help us live better, more comfortably, and to improve our well-being. The scenarios aim to illustrate the simultaneous changes that shall occur in the social, economic, technological and political spheres to facilitate the use of living micro-organisms in our built environments to process waste.

The most prevalent urban building types in the EU are residential, commercial and public building types. Concept design studies are developed to illustrate the integration of the Living Architecture system into new and existing buildings, specifically targeting single-family-homes, multi-family homes, office and school buildings.