Design With Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities by Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova,
and Terreform ONE. Actar Publishers, 2019.

This volume chronicles the projects and breakthroughs of Terreform ONE. They are a nonprofit
research group that defines salient new directions in socio-ecological design and other vital
intersections of architecture, synthetic biology, and urban systems.

The main idea of this book is to design against extinction. In the challenging context of
accelerating climate dynamics, the core discipline of architectural design is evolving and
embracing new forms of action. New York-based nonprofit Terreform ONE has established a
distinctive design tactic that investigates projects through the regenerative use of natural
materials, science, and the latest emergent fields relevant to urban design. This kind of design
approach uses actual living matter (not abstracted imitations of nature) to create new functional
elements and spaces. These future-based actions are not only grounded in social justice but are
also far-reaching in their application of digital manufacturing and maker culture. Terreform ONE
tackles urgent environmental and urban social concerns through the integrated use of living
materials and organisms.

Mitchell Joachim and Maria Aiolova, founders of Terreform ONE, describe their practice through
various projects and prolific research that has made a significant impact on what is increasingly
recognized as socio-ecological design. Together they achieve an abundant collection of projects
that validate these unique experimental methods, including the Monarch Sanctuary, a new urban
building type to protect butterflies from extinction; Cricket Shelter and Farm, a series of modular
volumes for harvesting alternate forms of insect protein; and biodegradable structures called
Mycoform that invokes principles of synthetic biology to prototype 100% compostable furniture.
Design with Life documents this growing body of work and outlines an original direction for a
changing discipline, reviewing concepts at a range of scales for metropolitan areas. In an age
where speed is everything, Terreform ONE reveals how future architecture and urban design
practices can cultivate biological processes and create resilient answers to tomorrow's wicked
problems.

Design with Life intentionally turns the discipline of architecture upside-down. The book contains
a plethora of essays from esteemed architects, biologists, historians, artists, and educators that
reframe the way in which design develops as a practice alongside science. Within this book, we
explore solutions that make a direct impact on our altered atmosphere. It’s a compilation of
advanced research that reviews concepts in the art of biotechnology from insect food sourcing
to fungi building components in cities across the globe. As of today, the planetary climate crisis
has reached a penultimate state. The nature of the next impending catastrophe and its
implications in design has yet to be determined.

Stemming from work initially developed at Terreform ONE and other prominent organizations in
the field, this volume disseminates ecologically intelligent design in various speculative urban
contexts. Equally, it unpacks projects and histories by other major theoreticians in many
comparable disciplines. Throughout these inventive structures and public activities, the aim is to
expose the environmental potentials within local municipalities and stimulate similar resolutions in
comparable neighborhoods.

For over a decade the works herein were developed in matchless laboratories such as New Lab,
Genspace, MEx, Cooper Union Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering, and MIT Media Lab,
each of which is filled with specialists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and methodologies.
These pioneering individuals refocused their efforts to discover and expand projects into the
larger framework of socio-ecological urbanism. Primarily the research inside this volume
cultivates innovative concepts and technologies for sustainability in energy, transportation,
infrastructure, buildings, manufacturing, waste treatment, food, air quality, and water. Original
investigations are derived from the effective techniques explored within the joint territory of
design and synthetic biology.

Contributing Authors:

Vivian Kuan is the Executive Director of Terreform ONE. She is an architect, business leader and on the faculty at Parsons in the Strategic Design and Management graduate program.

John Rudikoff Co-Chair of the Board of Directors at Terreform ONE. He is a lawyer and the CEO and managing director of CUBE (the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship) at Brooklyn Law School. 

Heather Lord is Co-Chair of the Board of Directors at Terreform ONE. She is a philanthropy and social enterprise thought leader and practitioner. 

Christian Hubert is the former Chair of the Board of Directors at Terreform ONE. He is an educator, architect, and writer based in lower Manhattan. He is an Associate Professor at Parsons the New School of Design.

Peder Anker is an Associate Professor at NYU and the author of From Bauhaus to Ecohouse: A History of Ecological Design.

Nina Edwards Anker is a sustainability-driven architect, solar lighting expert, furniture designer, academic, and Founder of NEA Studio in NYC.

Nurhan Gokturk is a successful multidisciplinary artist and urban designer in New York and Louisiana. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

Charles C. Mann is a bestselling author and journalist, specializing in scientific topics. His book 1491 won the National Academies Communication Award for the best book of the year. Most recently he published The Wizard and The Prophet.

Ray Kinoshita Mann is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Without a Hitch - New Directions in Prefabricated Architecture.

Darran Anderson is the author of Imaginary Cities and the forthcoming Inventory. Art writer for Studio International, occasional writer for The Guardian, Aeon, The Quietus, Gorse, and Vice.

Bruce Lindsey is Professor and the former Dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University and the author of Digital Gehry: Material Resistance, Digital Construction.

Charles McKinney is the former Principal Urban Designer for NYC Parks for 35 years and the author of the award-winning Design Manual for 21st Century Parks.

Julie Bargmann is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture founder, principal at D.I.R.T studio and the author of The Nature of Cities.

Margie Ruddick is an international, award-winning landscape designer and the recipient of the 2013 National Design Award for landscape architecture from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Winka Dubbeldam is the Chair and Miller Professor of Architecture at PennDesign at the University of Pennsylvania, award-winning architect and founder and principal of the New York firm Archi-Tectonics.

Forrest Meggers is an Assistant Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture and the author of LowEx Building Design for ZeroEmission Architecture.

Dickson Despommier is a microbiologist, an ecologist, an emeritus professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University and the author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.

Suzanne Anker is Professor and Chair, BFA Fine Arts Department, School of Visual Arts and a bio-art pioneer, visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and the biological sciences and the author of Epigenetic Landscapes Drawings as Metaphor.

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss is an architect and theorist in New York. He is an ex-head of research of Herzog & De Meuron, Co-founder of School of Missing Studies, and NAO.

Orkan Telhan is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts, Emerging Design Practices in the School of Design at The University of Pennsylvania and the author of Designature: The Nature of Signatures in Art and Design.

Nurit Bar-Shai is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of art, science, and technology. She is the Co-Founder of Genspace.

Ellen Jorgensen is a molecular biologist leading the do-it-yourself biology movement. She is a co-founder of both Biotech Without Borders and Genspace.

William Myers is a curator, writer, and teacher based in Amsterdam. His book Biodesign identifies the emerging practice of integrating biological processes into design and architecture.

Marcos Cruz is a Professor of Architecture at the Bartlett UCL, the Co-Founder of Marcosandmarjan and the author of The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture.

Paul Clemens Bart and Marvin Bratke are German architects and designers and the Co-Founders of BART//BRATKE research and architectural studio.

Sanjeev Shankar is the founder of a research-based studio where he seeks to understand, improve and propagate this knowledge Living root bridges in North-Eastern Indian Himalayas.

Amy Karle is a transmedia artist and designer who uses the mind and body as her medium. She has been named one of the “Most Influential Women in 3D Printing.”Bob Fisher is the Principal and Editor at Large at DesignIntelligence.

Zack Saunders is the founder of ARCH[or]studio, an anti-office engaged in investigative architectural design and experimentation, writings and conceptual art projects often situated at the intersection of architecture and theory, illustration and product design.

Nicholas Gervasi is a licensed architect, writer, preservationist, and educator. He is a Project Architect/Head Researcher at Terreform ONE and teaches at the Pratt Institute Department of Architecture.