Metabolism as Technology

Energy and sustainability, Essay, expanding design practices, Formats, New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial, No Density, Rachel Armstrong, Technology and fabrication, Topics

Architecture, Architecture&climate, Architecture&nature, Biotech, Challenge, Community, Consumption, development, Earth, Ecological design, Ecological researches, Ecosystem, Environmental technologies, Essay, Extraterrestrial, Food production, Industrialization, Livability, Living system, Metabolism, Planetary models, Research

This essay is an excerpt of "New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial" by Jeffrey S. Nesbit and Guy Trangoš -- https://lccn.loc.gov/2019954925

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky observed that the “problem” of biology, rather than engineering challenges, would be key to settling spaces beyond the Earth.Drawing on Bruno Latour’s notions of Earthbound and geostory I investigate the potential for terrestrial life on alien worlds and the planetary-scale forces that travelers, settlers, and colonists will need to overcome to achieve this aim. Providing an alternative reading of life in space than the present inescapably anthropocentric and terrestrial view of reality, alternative scenarios—such as directed panspermia and the Living Architecture project, which involve spatially and temporally “programming” the metabolism of microbes using a range of technological apparatuses from bioreactors to space probes—are proposed that engage with the physics, chemistry, and potential life-forms that may render space a fertile terrain for alternative kinds of life and modes of inhabitation.