The Transgenic Zoo , by Peter Yeadon, illustrates this article. The Zoo would be situated in downtown Toronto. It would cover an extensive stretch of land that would be available after an expressway and rail lines are buried.The work considers architectural possibilities for new nanotech and recombinant bio- genetic materials.
i t is a challenge for architects to think small.We have been through the glorious Machine Age, the Space Age, the Digital Age and the Informa- tion Age. But none of it has prepared us for what has been emerging from the nanotech sector during the past decade. Nanotechnology is technology that is developed at the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a metre.These are technologies of a molecular scale and, as in those previous epochs, architecture will likely follow and embrace these atomic feats after they have become commonplace.
They are, in a sense, neither bulk nor molecule and open a window into the fuzzy size region where bulk solid state properties rise out of the molecular noise.
Dr. Moungi G. Bawendi, Keck Professor of Chemistry Department of Chemistry and Center for Material Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Who among us could resist working with a programmable substance that would appear to assume any shape, colour, and density? String could become wood. Glass could transmogrify into concrete, and then be instructed to return to glass. Paint could become leaves.The opening in that wall could follow you around the room.What is it, if it can become Architecture in the Age of Nanomatter Peter Yeadon
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O n S ite review
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I ssue 10 2003
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