Biointegrated Design / BioiD


BioiD is a multi-disciplinary research platform that explores novel architectural environments through design. New computational tools, as well as technological advances in material sciences and fields such as synthetic biology and biotechnology are being investigated, giving rise of alternative solutions for the future built environment.

Architecture is undergoing profound changes and architects are thus forced to rethink their parameters with regard to both professional practice and education: not only the manner in which they understand the body and its place within its natural habitat, but also how architects are going to respond when buildings rely on radically different materials and hybridised with biological matter, creating semi-living systems of a rather unpredictable nature. How are designers going to understand design when it implies notions of programming, control and maintenance of cellular structures that are extremely heave on data – structures that grow, evolve and eventually mutate? In the advent of such developments the professional practice is being critically challenged, not just in terms of the tools that are being employed, the expertise and body of knowledge and emerging interdisciplinary work methodologies, but also in terms of its aesthetic intent.

The sustainable imperative so prevalent in current architecture bears considerable relevance to BioiD. New technologies and living materials offer great benefits in terms of sustainability and provide commercial motivation for research and development. While maintaining awareness of this potential, BioiD is also concerned with broader parameters beyond the considerations described by ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ terminology. It looks for alternative designs that encompass simultaneously typological, topological, morphological, along with ecological and corpological preoccupations. Ultimately, BioiD looks for new design solutions that include body-centred architecture, bio-design, bio-mimetics and morphogenetics.

BioiD is directed by Marcos Cruz who is a Professor of Innovative Environments at the Bartlett School of Architecture / University College London. His activity is not only focused on research, external consultancy and teaching at postgraduate level, but also on the supervision of doctoral thesis in this field. Extended partners of BioiD are marcosandmarjan (with Marjan Colletti), MArch Unit 20 (with Marjan Colletti and Javier Ruiz), BiotA Lab (with Richard Beckett), as well as Syn.de.Bio (with Richard Beckett).


PhD students:
Shneel Malik (supervisors: Marcos Cruz and Brenda Parker)
Richard Beckett (supervisors: Marcos Cruz and Mark Miodownik)
Jaime Bartolome' (supervisors: Marcos Cruz and Peg Rawes)
Niccolo Casas (supervisors: Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz)
Michael Wihart (supervisors: Neil Spiller and Marcos Cruz - finished VIVA June 2014)
Alessandro Ayuso (supervisors: Marcos Cruz and Jonathan Hill - finished VIVA February 2015)
Pablo Gil (supervisors: Stephen Gage and Marcos Cruz - finished VIVA June 2015)