What do you get if you put an architect, civil engineer, computer scientist, and microbiologist into a room? A future building that grows its own foundations.


This might sound like a less than funny joke. In fact, it's the result of a unique project launched by researchers at the universities of Newcastle and Northumbria, in England, to create a new generation of building materials that are partly living and able to respond meaningfully to their environment.

The futuristic plan involves engineering individual bacterial cells that react to changes in the environment and strengthen the soil around them, potentially rendering traditional building foundations obsolete.

The project is the brainchild of Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson, reader in design computation, at Newcastle University. He's an architect with a degree in synthetic biology who wants to combine his two areas of expertise to revolutionise the world of construction.

- See more at: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/591394/scitech/science/future-buildings-could-grow-their-own-foundations#sthash.gparPWdZ.dpuf

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/nerdcore/future-buildings-could-grow-their-own-foundations/vi-AAl989Z