Flora Robotica: A bio-hybrid approach to architecture

The objective of the flora robotica project is to investigate closely linked symbiotic relationships between living plants and robots for the purpose of growing architectural artifacts and spaces. To achieve this aim, a diverse cross-disciplinary consortium has been assembled drawing together expertise in Architecture, Computer Science & Swarm Robotics, Artificial Life & Biology, Artificial Evolution & Robotics, Sensing & Mechatronics and Molecular & Cellular Biology. Our architectural motivation is to lay principled foundations for potentially disruptive alternatives to current paradigms of resource intensive construction by harnessing the capabilities of living systems - specifically their capabilities for ‘free’ material sourcing, resource distribution, adaptation, decision making and self-repair.These project objectives challenge orthodox approaches to architectural design, demanding new approaches, interfaces, modelling and construction workflows to explore, design, construct and maintain bio-hybrid architectures. The paper will discuss the design approaches we are developing to address the following core challenges: 1.Bio-hybrids exist in states of continual growth and adaptation. 2.Bio-hybrids require methods for continuously projecting growth futures given initial and anticipated conditions. 3.Bio-hybrids require alternative standards of tolerance and design objective achievement4.High-level architectural objectives require decomposition methods for steering low-level self-organising behaviours of specimens.