Imprimer la Lumière: Bacterial Luminescence as a 3D-Printed Spiral Micro-Architecture

Modern biology is in the process of reinterpreting
our body. Where the body was once considered an
autonomous, controlled and essentially closed organism,
we are now understood as participating in an ecology of
commensal, symbiotic and pathogenic microorganisms.
It is believed that we are inhabited by 10–100 trillion
microbial cells (Ursell et al. 2012; Yang 2012). This radical
rethinking of our body has existential consequences
(Helmreich 2016). What is it to be human, how is the
body functioning, and what does health and will mean
in such an open interacting system? Imprimer la lumière
asks: if architecture is based on a humanism—that is,
an understanding of being human—how will such a new
self-understanding create profound differences in how
architecture is conceived, shaped, and materialized?