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Heterotic Architecture.
Ted Kruger. Nanoscale machinery is not uncommon. Biological materials are produced by processes at this scale in all living things. They are non-optimised, flexible, responsive and robust. Another approach to intelligent materials, consistent with Takagi's second path, is the adoption of materials of biological origin in bulk as functioning devices. Currently, we use bamboo and leather, for example, as harvested products. While each has its unique properties to be used or overcome, the greatest portion of its original functionality was terminated at harvest. It is precisely these properties that we seek in an intelligent material. Skin, as a biological material possesses characteristics that are desirable in an architectural cladding. These include protection from the environment, an active role in maintaining homeostatic internal conditions such as thermal and humidity levels, regeneration or self-repair, sensory perception and bio-degradability It is flexible, compliant and responsive, our largest and most robust organ. Skin was one of the first tissues to be engineered because it is not highly structured. It has a very high demand level owing to burn accidents and chronic ulcer conditions stemming from diabetes. In the traditional treatment of severe burns, the damaged tissues are cut away and the wound covered with skin removed from a cadaver. This covering is often rejected by the recipient's immune system and must be replaced on an ongoing basis while the skin is generated on other portions of the body for transplant to the damaged areas. Cultured skin tissues are being developed to circumvent the tissue rejection problem and to ensure a supply of materials. With cultured tissue, fibroblasts and keratinocytes from a donor's skin are grown onto a synthetic degradable matrix that has been prepared with appropriate growth factors and proteins. A 'soup' prepared from an infant's circumcised foreskin can seed up to 250,000 square feet of synthetic tissue that can be grown in a matter of weeks. These are cladding dimensions.
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