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  • apparently she's been playing too much minecraft

  • Can you grow an architectural structure be grown from plant 'stem' cells? Can they be programmed to grown in ways we want it to? Growing leaves in the places we want and having proper plumbing? I believe you guys can do it if you work with geneticists. What kind of gene mapping's going on with plant cells? Hope there's progress there...since most contemporary problems can be solved if this works without creating more problems, which is how scientific solutions usually work

  • Rachel that was marvellous. to believe this could happen is amazing, but to actually see you and others making it happen is perhaps one of the greatest scientific breakthrough's of humankind.

    I have just one question though, how do you stop it from spreading once the process has began and has completed its work?

    However as you say you are researching this at present and I wish you the very best.

    My best regards

    Alan Minshull (OAS ocean artists society member)

  • Indeed, so informative and very comprehensive.Thanks for sharing, this is just too useful for me.

  • Can anyone tell me if there are any further updates on this subject.

  • Yes you are BANGABLE!!!

  • @1DAYSPAY How crude. Can we not comment on her physical attractiveness tastefully?

  • I'm not too confident in her ability, she classed the "bottom up approach" as starting from scratch, but that's wrong, it refers to building up atom by atom or molecule by molecule... and the "top down approach" refers to taking something large, like a cm3 of a metal, and milling it down to smaller parts... The presentation was shit, with no data, and her descriptions were vague, it was really pretty bad A-Level work, I wonder if she was asked to do it because she seems a bit like Lara Croft?

  • OMG she's a fembot.

  • Could be interesting for Amsterdam to ! I hope she will have succes !

  • wild ideas...too eager to give presentation about them, too eager to say that funding is not enought,so... "gimme money so I can carry on doing the same".....classic academia.

  • also it was slightly distracting her saying 'top down... bottom up' all the time

  • @katzunjammer It is about an intuitive system with a primitive intelligence. Think, perhaps, the way in which Theo Jansen creates "brains" in his Strandbeest constructions out of soda bottles and plastic tubing. Now fuse that with basic ideas of self-replicating biological structures as your materials and a knowledge of local ecologies with the intent to balance out the cycles, and a smarter system of construction emerges.

  • it would be good if one day we could genetically engeneer buildings ...like uhm...plant a seed and a mad st. pauls basillica grows up...but how would we kill it if it went wrong? what if in the year 3000 the venice has been destroyed with giant stone plate fungus?

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  • @katzunjammer Really, I suppose it is a false notion to relinquish all control over design and construction to a purely self-organising system as this system may be inherently prone to mutation and could produce undesirable outcomes, but at the very least, it is an attempt at relegating the biological and ecological idiosyncrasies in situ with artificial constructions and societies to achieve a mutual benefit. Nature is not necessarily efficient, and technology does not possess all the answers.

  • @arquiteuthis However, nature works entirely on sunlight, sure there are minerals, salts etc that nature uses in the production of anything, but it is entirely sustainable by the life/death cycle. I don't particularly like the way this presentation was put across, but the idea could work in venice... The key to its success lies in the ability to turn on and off growth cycles, I expect that without DNA reproduction could easily be controlled, and it's merely a case of precise growth control...

  • @katzunjammer Although I think you are taking the idea presented in this talk to an extreme, I do often use the analogy of growing a building often in the way I describe what role I think architecture should facilitate. It is not so much about a truly "organic" architecture that lives, grows, and dies, but rather, a system that fuses synthetic and biological processes and takes into account preformative qualia in the way the building acts in its lifespan.

  • I agree that this may not have *immediate* practical application, but her point of moving away from top-down decision-making in design and use of materials is spot-on. Our traditional building practices emphasize a single, immutable tectonic outcome, when in reality, climactic, social, and programmatic conditions are in constant flux. Buildings should have true existential lifecycles. Permanence is a silly concept if you think about it.

  • I like the idea, but why does it end with that thing about traffic? Well that's stupid. It basically says "you're too poor to drive here". That ain't a solution, it just creates more of a gap between rich and poor. You need a solution to allow more people to drive there without getting into traffic jams, not to restrict them. The best way to have no traffic jams is to completely restrict cars from driving there, would that make you happy?

  • This isn't bullshit, it's thinking ahead.

  • As long as a speaker looks like they believe what they are saying, it seems like you could talk about anything at ted, even if what you are saying is flat out stupid, just so long as you speak with an accent, look milfy, and poorly base your speech in reality for 30 seconds, before continuing on with your absurd speech.

  • Bravo!! Impressed!

  • Milf

  • great speaker, I like the work you are doing. She explain it very good. Do you need any help in the USA?

  • she's full of shit...but damn, SHE"S HOT!!!

  • Dr Armstrong is a Medical Doctor and Sci-Fi Author who doesn't seam to understand the engineering principles involved in her idea. I can't stand her throwing around physics concepts like "energy transfer", and "stress" incorrectly.

    Living systems such as trees die and collapse; why would we use them for shelter instead of permanent artificial structures?

  • @Aerosteon well if u pick trees yes, but coral reefs stay for much longer

  • Corel reefs are incredibly slow growing and incredibly fragile. An atoll can take 30 million years or more to form.

  • @Aerosteon The same happens to a structure if not properly maintained.

  • The pyramids are holding up quite well and were not even built with modern civil engineering knowledge. Today we have the technology to build near indestructible structures capable of withstanding even nuclear explosions.

  • The concept of symbiotic homes (cities) which can sustain themselves is an amazing idea. A small scale prototype structure and its research data would be very helpful.

    I looked into a similar idea for accelerated growth of coral to create structures below sea level a few years back without success.

  • Old Technology. I was studying this 30 years ago while working on a concept for a new counter top material. It is viable but takes a long time to manifest itself into viable structures.

  • blink, blink, blink... kokain addict!

  • And how do you manage to stop this growth where and when you need to? oh... yeah sounds great but frankly, a stupid fantasy. we ALL have 'cool concepts' in our heads, she should have put this in one of her shitty books not wasting our time on youtube (and TED). I want 10 minutes BACK.....

  • idiot...lol

  • that's a freaking amazing theory.

  • Great idea!!

  • I hate to double post, but notice the emotional triggers she uses, she is selling an under-developed idea. she fails to support her point but instead talks about 'what could be' with No Real details to her core 'idea'... Lame. but I am sure the pseudo-intellectuals among us will eat this garbage up....

  • I don't really care about the architecture, but this is the first time I learned about some of the properties of proto cells.

  • actually, real intellectuals would think about her concepts, look up more information on it, and then see what they think after that. Not to mention she gives a fairly specific example, although maybe not as specific as you'd like.

  • seriously I am not amused. this chick is a joke. doesn't anyone else see it?

  • thank you! I had the same feeling when i first saw this on TED. this is pure garbage conception -not even GOOD conception... she needs to stick with lame sci-fi because porting it to the real world, in front of a thinking audience is killing her. not only that, watch -anyone- on TED present their ideas and they are typically intellectuals trying to enlighten us. she is however, seeming more... [marketing] and trying to Sell her conception... pure bullshit this is....

  • Just imagine this technology at its peak combine with nano technology. we could manipulate & control the mechanism of nature itself. The world would be like a fairy tale!

  • It's a fancy idea, one I favor, but the presentation lacked real world test cases, and was too theoretical. Also she did not turn around.

  • @audiowiz thats because shes drop dead gorgeous sexy - looking at her face and trying to concentrate was difficult enough - imagine focusing on one of her other body parts.

  • Dude, that's exactly what I was thinking

  • omg she's so hot....and smart too! <3

  • people with limited imagination and intelligence like the ones below will never be able to fully appreciate the brilliance and potential of her ideas. and you wonder why TED didn't broadcast their talks to the general public initially. the reason's right here in this thread.

  • could somebody explain to me what's a first world country? or give an example of such country....

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  • western europe, northern america etc

    countries with high gdp, affluence, industrailization and significant infrastructure.

  • It sounds like something from a Sci Fi movie, but the idea is fascinating.

  • Working cells without DNA? I don't belive it.

  • Nice ideas.

  • Cancer is a mutation but stopping growth is something that comes to mind... perhaps once the syntesizers are destroyed by poisons or somehow deactivated, then the limestone will be all that remains... perhaps the organism does stop tho...

  • There is a big contradiction in her claims, at first she speaks of "chemically engineered matter" and than fluently switches to description "limestone", manipulating the audience to believe, that the engineered matter is as natural and safe as a limestone.

    Furthermore, I was missing one basic explanation in her seemingly solic logic: How do you stop that matter to grow and spread further? Everything in nature, even a tree is growing only to a certain size and then stops. Only cancer does not.

  • correct, engineered cancer??? I hope not.

  • what is wrong with her lips?

  • Too many collagen shots from a cosmetician.

  • We need to learn from the Zerg and make living, self-repearing buildings.

    Coincidentally, one of the architects promoting this view is called Christian Kerrigan.

    Spooky!

  • I hope and pray that these protocell wont start reproducing or getting out of control, how is the production halted when the process has reached the required size? Messing with thing we dont understand is dangerous especially on a moleculr level.

  • "messing with things we don't understand is dangerous"

    That is a ridiculous statement.

    There is literally ZERO knowledge which humans have discovered by any way other than this.

    Messing with things we don't understand - is the only way we have of approaching an understanding of ANYTHING.

    "Messing with things we don't understand" is practically the very DEFINITION OF LEARNING.

  • Why is our curiosity endless?

    Curiosity in most animals gives an evolutionary advantage: the urge to explore discovers new food sources; combined with learning - it gives you the power to predict things about the world around you.

    If we can predict the movements of predators we can better avoid or defend ourselves from them. Then we invent weapons, fences and safe houses.

    Understanding the seasons allows us to better predict when and where food will be, then we invent farming.

  • to go further...

    A Kitten playing with a string, is actually learning about it's environment. It is fascinated by the shape and movement-style of the string. It curiously messes with things it doesn't understand.

    It's constant batting at the string actually teaches it more about how the string moves, and why. Eventually as it can better predict the movement of the string - the game is no longer interesting and the kitten looses interest.

    "Play" is: instinctive & intuitive "learning".

  • So that we can end up being great spellers like you?

    I think not.

  • omggg stop hating on her clothes or accessories!!!!!!!!! just cuz the talk goes over your head doesnt mean you have to make fun of her

  • replying to stupid comments gives the impression that there was something to talk about. The internet has a weird way of making people say the most ignorant things.

    Dont know a single person who talks like that in person. Im also not in high school . Anyway, you are cool, they are acting weird. (2cents)

  • ya, i know

  • And actually, I do know people who speak like that. Wish I could go to a school like yours.

  • In fairness, the possibilities and technologies she's talking about are fascinating, but I found myself zoning out sometimes... I think because she talked non-stop, no dynamism to her presentation.

  • You'll find that with some of the TED talks. Mainly because they are trying to talk about some amazingly interesting works, but have a very limited amount of time in which to talk about it.

  • ooo yaaa, its gotta be her fault. It's not your inability to focus, it's definitely the speakers fault...

  • No I agree, I'm sure part of it is me. I agree with MDKKnD (above) too, the limited time probably doesn't help.

  • GO STEEN AND MARTIN!!! Artificial life 4 life!

  • 4life4life4life4life?

  • Sure our current methods are sustainable we just might need a mrFusion soon.

  • she is wearing a "boyfriend jeans" to a ted talk>> lol

  • the idea is good... but forget about Venice, let her sink.

  • when we master this bio-tech we'd have the best of both worlds. A symbiotic relationship between science & nature!

    thumbs up for a greener earth.

  • A truly marvelous development if they can make it happen. I've been thinking about this for years, the fact that our way of doing things simply aren't very clever in a broad perspective. I mean, the logical thing to do would be to take our energy directly from solar radiation and construct our buildings and gadgets using biological components. Of course, it's complicated, but this might be a step in that direction. Damn, can't wait till I have my graduation and can start doing some real work.

  • what? huh? oh sorry I wasn't listening because I was distracted by your non-symmetrical pendant necklace. :/

  • this is a good idea, you people are fucking idiots

  • I would do her but I would have to wear ear plugs.

  • more taxes isn't forward thinking or actually doing something about congestion and pollution. building better roads, public transportation and better cars is actually doing something. they chose not to, so they just tax and monitor instead.

  • An architectural idea that is decades from reality and the residents in Stockholm voted to put in a system that charges a fee based on where you drive. Two half baked stories. 10 min of my life wasted.

  • I just noticed your comment. You saved me six minutes.Thank You.;-)

  • think of the possibilities roads that repair themselves.,,, but how will they no when the road is level or if its to high...... )

    programmable life media ?

  • Or what if the roads and buildings get along like ants and termites? This bitch is fucking whacked. Lets do a bunch of bio-chemical experiments, manipulate genetic materials to once again suit mans needs. Wake up in your "house" on the wrong end of a feeding tube;-) Programmable Life Media? Exactly. What if the highway wants to go eat "over there?"

  • thats hillary's it takes a virus to raise a virus def con 4 plan

  • We can't try to make things simpler. Nope.Lets make EVERYTHING as complicated as possible. And can we really trust the living fridge with our icey cold beer?

  • nah nah that wont work but for making material it might mayb we will come up with a proces to grow super cooling fridge insulation then kill it kind of an anti life thing then take this and make the coldest dam beer coolers eva

  • besides crazy women are better in bed

  • And crazy, angry women are the best;-)

  • crazy and angry sex may be good but i dont wanna wake up in the morning to find my penis on the 101 freeway

  • Not angry with me! Angry with her boyfriend ;-)

  • that would make you a tool huh ? lol rise above it..... I know it sounds, feels fun ... exercize your humanity /intellect logic........ damm revenge is a human emotion a literally physical thing were capable of thought ... logic and so much more ..... we can find are own or demand independence.... my dick thinks otherwise too but its not as smart as my trutopian blood ahhh yeah it is what it is cheerz for bEeRS

  • I was just being a fucking retard. I don't go for that shit myself. Cheers for bEeRS!

    Kiddolinfen has a new vid up. Come over and visit.

  • i dont care im only concerned about the po's

    the potential's.....

    your are one my beer laiden well ya should be beer laiden lol

    cheerz

  • hey comment reflection i dont remember saying any of this shit 4 days ago .........dammm lol

  • even truer

  • so true, so true

  • she's too rehearsed... seems desperate. but sure, ride the eco bandwagon... you'll get ahead with your good looks.

  • lol i love how she walks away at the end thinking something like "fuck this audience"

  • Nature doesnt waste stuff, period. Neither should we.

  • Oh, I catch your drift, living housings gone bad secreting digestive juices into their innards, spooky...

  • great milf!

  • i'm just wondering what happens to the housing market, and the jobs involved in the housing industry.

    If there's protocell's making homes and repairing homes that may free up manpower in the broadest sense, but what about those who are not interested in spending their time being scientific or an avid/expert computer user?

    I know too many people in college who were interested in mechanics and technology has outdated the skills they learned in college already. Homes are next?

  • People who would previously done work that is no longer available are then free to do something even more useful with their time.

  • like stand in unemployment lines?

    That's exactly my point actually... the housing bubble, and its effect on employment in that industry were but a small comparison to her suggestion for building bridges, skyscrapers, and homes without the need of manpower.

    It's easy from an uninvolved perspective to say "he can always get a job doing something else" until it happens to your industry. Then that same statement is just plain cold.

  • People don't need employment.

    What people need is food, shelter, medical care, social interaction etc.

    The progress of technology is making most of our needs cheaper, easier to get. Thus we can all work less.

    But it doesn't always work perfectly.

    Sometimes housing (shelter) is too expensive.

    And to properly keep up with the changing cultural/social landscape we must always upgrade our phones/tvs/pcs/etc.

  • allow for creative destruction to work its course and well all be on a better foot in the future

  • a deficiency in nitrogen in an atmosphere composed of some 79% nitrogen?

  • her face looks... wrong

  • well i live in Australia and because of global warming we are going to lose the great barrier reef (CORAL REEF),how about using this technology to build up the reef

  • Like she says it's not a living material. It actually is just attracted to objects and calcifies. It can't bring a reef back to life unfortunately.

  • I don't think you can do that with the technology she was talking about. I kinda zoned out of her talk but it was referring to some kind of 'engineered cell system' The great barrier reef is an actual living thing with many different types of corals that are alive. If we used this stuff to rebuild it we'd end up with a massive chunk of limestone out in the sea as opposed to a living reef system. I'm guessing.

  • not too practical then

  • thats botox talk.

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  • Misleading information at the end. Or rather, and outright lie. 45% of air pollution is not generated by U.S. vehicles - 45% of the world's VEHICLE air pollution, maybe. But in actuality, human breathing generates multiple times more pollution, and cow flatulence produces significantly more as well. And what about American coal? A Congestion tax just beats down the lower class more, too. Way to create a bourgeois society, Stockholm. Great. There are more effective ways to reduce pollutio

  • you are correct. this system does not seem to be equitable. perhaps no one should be allowed to drive in downtown stockholm?

  • I dont know about you, but id rather have a world without cars, than one without beef... Or to stop breathing, at that :)

    No lower class will be beaten down in Stockholm, because, other than in most parts of the us (or so i hear), there is a working public transportation system.

    Its my convition that the popular belief: "Everyone has the right to own a car and to use it at his leisure." will soon have to fall.

  • @Arudoloff

    I agree. Even those who have no need to drive choose to take their cars out to the local corner store. It's a lifestyle they grew up with.

    I believe also that there is no way we can all own a house with a picket fence and a dog.

  • Alas, we're too many already, If the whole world will live by western standards with the technology of today we can start looking for a new planet in some fifty years...

    The only problem here is, why should developing countries limit themselves, when we never did?

  • I call your bullshit, we are only carving on the very surface of this dirt ball, estimating to use about 1% of the total mass of it, and we always have space to extract resources from.

  • One percent? not even a fraction of that... It does not matter anyway, most our planet consists of is iron, iron oxide and silicium. the elements relevant for life (other than Oxygen and Hydrogen) add up to less than 0,5% of the earths mass. Of that, only a fraction is avaiable to ecosystems, most is bound in minerals. There is a limit to growth, and we all will have to face the problems thus resulting.

  • Not true, Oxygen is the most abundant element of them all, minerals have a lot of oxygen in the molecular structure.

  • You missed the point of what I was saying.. Cars have a minimal impact compared to the many other things in the world. Like coal.

    Cars aren't going to solve the problem. They're a very small part of a big picture, and it's sad that all the focus is on them. This issue isn't going to be fixed, this is all completely politically motivated

  • the way to do anything like this is not through mandates, but through incentives and research..nothing else truly "solves a problem" like that without hurting others.

    look at googles effort for renewable energy cheaper than coal...now thats admirable..as they are working on the actual problem...the fact that we arent easily capable of producing things without hurting other people.

    make it market ready and that will be what we need.

  • nice idea... would love to know more bout this.

  • Sounds like a good idea!

  • Ok so I think her idea is amazing but is it me or does she look like shes acting. this looks like this a reenactment or a scene from a movie or a tv show...

  • well i dont think she gave this speech off the top of her head

  • Some public speakers become a bit "animated" as they get used to doing presentations and have to repeat the same subjects many times?

    Maybe thats why,,,,I got that way once doing presentations to the public on weapons systems years ago,,,dry mouth,,,broken record feelings hahaha.

  • I don't know why people thumbed down your comment. I got that vibe too. It's probably just her style.

  • very interesting idea

  • I love the advertisement at the end.

    It shows that socialized industry (public roads) are SLOWLY innovated and imitate private enterprise, only by the pressure of private progress.

  • the best part of this video is how not understanding everything she says is so attractive

  • congrats rachel youv over come a fear...

    well done

  • I want this lady to be the next PM of Australia.

  • She reminds me of a hot robot.

  • There is an old adage: everyone wants to build, nobody wants to maintain. This is still largely true. This new approach to architecture would certainly alleviate the bothersome aspect of maintenance - but this would deprive us of the need for those in the profession of architectural restoration.

    Other than this negative aspect on a profession & a form of discipline, the speech is a good one.

    Finally a new TED that i have more interest in & which creates - for me less aversion.

  • Depriving people of jobs that don't need to be done, useless jobs - why is this negative?

    What if an eccentric millionaire paid people to stand on their heads on his front lawn. If he stopped paying people to do this - would it be negative?

    Why mourn the loss of a pointless, useless job?

  • her eyes and the way she talks freaks me out...haha shes kinda like a robot..haha

  • pretty interesting to hear about metabolic materials being used in architecture.

    i also thought the use of OCR systems in t he stockhom commercial afterwards was interesting as they used OCR to make sure the right people paid charges. Thus, if you can take a picture of it, you can use OCR to decipher who it belongs to. just ask ibm.

  • wood is a "metabolic material"

  • Why so serious?

  • she is a cutie

  • Growing a city rather than building it: I love it! It's like the epitamy of organic architecture. Gaudi would've really enjoyed this.

  • I like this lady. She reminds me of an irobot for some reason.

  • She has her speech memorized word for word. There is not a huge amount of expression.

  • i noticed that as well

  • If her skin was gray and she was a little uglier and a lot less happy and she would be a replicate of Susan Calvin.

  • I'm really sort of insulted by the shallow comments. I wanted to hear some REAL opinions. Nonetheless, I thought this concept was really interesting, and it would be very cool if it works! :)

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  • the design of her top subtly brings the attention towards her breasts.

  • A designed chemical reaction that will take years to even prove it's ability to help poor Venice from sinking any further...

    Well Done Though If It Works... Possibly Other Uses Can Be Found Once The Technology Has Been Proven Effective.

    And Guys... She's Nothing Special...She Would Only Barely Make It To Average In Australia...

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  • Do you mean mascara? A masquerade is something else entirely...

  • I wouldn't find her attractive if she didn't have that accent and that domineering presence! wow. Fantastic Idea, especially since I want to go into architecture!

  • Domineering presence? You mean she should be more submissive and not think for herself? I guess I can't fault you for disliking a brit accent, however it sure turns me on.

  • I kinda got what WARDOG1138 meant from the first several seconds. She should play a Bond girl. Hell, I think she could play M.

    She's probably just very confident in her area of expertise.

  • sorry, opposite of that

  • regardless of what has been talked about, isn't it cool to see a somewhat good looking girl with a strong voice talking at TED? I like it. Like it better than the 90 y.o. scientists they put to talk sometimes... this is entertainment!

  • I felt that her appearance was rather distracting

  • you'll get used to it.

  • this could end up being really dangerous and consume the globe

  • microbes already are consuming the globe :)

  • 0:40 someone forgot the big ol' sun.

  • artificial? aren't we natural? why are the things we make unnatural?