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TED Fellows The TED Fellows Directory > Rachel Armstrong

TEDGlobal 2009 Senior Fellow '12

United Kingdom

Co-Director of AVATAR (Advanced Virtual And Technological Architectural Research) Group; Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture & Construction, The University of Greenwich; Visiting Research Assistant, Centre for Fundamental Living Technology, Department

Websites

Bio

“Architecture can only be truly sustainable when it is connected to nature, not insulated from it.”

Rachel Armstrong innovates and designs sustainable solutions for the built and natural environment using advanced new technologies such as, Synthetic Biology – the rational engineering of living systems - and smart chemistry. Her research prompts a revaluation of how we think about our homes and cities and raises questions about sustainable development of the built environment. She creates open innovation platforms for academia and industry to address environmental challenges such as, carbon capture & recycling, smart ‘living’ materials and sustainable design. Her award winning research underpins her bold approach to the way that she challenges perceptions, presumptions and established principles related to scientific concepts and the building blocks of life and society. She embodies and promotes new transferrable ways of thinking ‘outside of the box’ and enables others to also develop innovative environmental solutions. Her innovative approaches are outlined in her forthcoming TEDBook on Living Architecture.

Q&A

What projects are you working on now that are most meaningful to you?

The collaborative research on new ‘living’ materials for the built environment is particularly important for me, as it is essential that we go beyond talking about change in the way we make buildings and actually demonstrating how this could be done.

I am passionate about the ‘Saving Venice’ project that I am working on with a team of forward thinking architects and scientists. The idea is to sustainably grow an artificial limestone reef underneath the city of Venice, to slow down its sinking into the soft delta soils on which it is built, using a new chemically programmable, DNA-less cell called a ‘protocell’.

Besides your work, what issues/ideas/pursuits are you passionate about?

I am committed to mentoring young people find ways of thinking differently by sharing my experience in interdisciplinary practice and innovation. I hope to help them find new frameworks with which to challenge current preconceptions so that they can deal effectively with future ‘unknown’ challenges.

What do you do for fun?

I am unstoppably optimistic and I find amusement in just about everything I do. Science is a continual source of inspiration and creativity for me, and "having fun" is not something that I consider that I need to pursue separately from what I do in my everyday activities.

Recount a surprising anecdote about yourself that few people know.

I love finding new ways of working with incredibly talented people. One of my current projects is with the Earth 2.0 team that provides an innovation platform through which sustainable solutions can be identified, developed and implemented.