Theme: Responsible Interactions
Our vision is to develop biotechnologies to create a new generation of Living Buildings which are responsible and responsive to their natural environment; grown using living engineered materials to reduce inefficient industrial construction processes; metabolise their own waste, reducing pollution, generate energy and high-value products and modulate their microbiome to benefit human and ecological health and wellbeing.
The Responsible Interactions theme carries out reflexive, inclusive and critical research that aims to develop a responsible, coordinated and integrated approach to biotechnology for the built environment, by understanding the interactions that emerge from HBBE’s activities::
• Investigate the interactions between natural systems, new and existing (bio)technologies, construction practice, the built environment, and cultures.
• Support and explore interactions between researchers, stakeholders and end-users of biotechnologies in order to capture and understand the novel research collaborations and practices required to underpin the emergence of responsible biotechnologies.
• Develop an expanded understanding of the impacts of large-scale prototyping of biotechnologies, taking into account the intersection of the social and technical contexts.
Our experimental house (The OME) and its prototypes, in combination with interdisciplinary and collaborative activities, will provide key platforms for enabling these interactions..
The Responsible Interactions Theme works with the other three HBBE research themes to scale up and deploy emerging biotechnologies for application in the Built Environment.
Our current prototypes are:
The theme is co-lead by Ruth Morrow, Carmen McLeod and Ben Bridgens.
