IN the future we could be living in buildings that are literally alive. They will be heated by boilers that, instead of using fossil fuels, will use metabolic processes to provide heat. Living windows will contain, between sheets of glass, aerobic reactions that release bubbles. Elegant decorative ceramic tiles will function like biological batteries, hiding within them anaerobic reactions. Concrete will heal itself. Glass columns will clean our waste water, whilst producing electricity and other useful products.

That is the future, according to Rachel Armstrong, professor of experimental architecture at Newcastle University. “There will be a metabolic revolution, a living material revolution,” she says confidently.

Armstrong, who is at the forefront of developing these new technologies, will be appearing at an event titled Can Science Fiction Save Us at the Edinburgh International Science Festival this month. She claims that it won’t be very long till we start to see this kind of technology incorporated into new and existing buildings. In fact, something like that future is already here in the form of the BIQ (“bio intelligent quotient) house in Hamburg. This building’s south-facing façade has an outer shell which produces microalgae – tiny plants, no larger than bacteria – which generate energy for the building. “People are already living inside that building,” says Armstrong.

The BIQ building, she says, shows us one of the directions in which living buildings will develop. Their facades, whether glass or ceramic or some other material, will become vessels for organisms which will create metabolic reactions. There are many others. In fact, she says, the change we are most likely to see first in our own homes, is the stripping out of the gas or electric boiler to be replaced by a metabolic one.

“If we could change every boiler system in buildings within our cities to metabolically-organised digesters, that do the same work as a boiler, that would be the first step in the metabolic, the living building.”

Armstrong describes the old system of using fossil fuels as one that is reliant on “dead metabolisms”. She says: “To get what we want out of them we end up burning the hell out of the long-chain hydrocarbons in them. We invest a lot of energy to do that, and we get a lot of waste products that we can’t use out of that process.”

This new technology might not look conspicuously different from the old. “You won’t see the gubbins going on inside the boiler,” she says. “You won’t care whether it’s oil or a live organism culture. You’ll still be calling the relevant service man if the thing breaks down. What you might notice is that instead of it sounding like the roar of the natural gas, what you’ll hear is gurgling. That will be the main change.”

Other biotechnologies are also currently in development, include concrete that repairs itself, a material created by microbiologist Henk Jonkers, which uses bacteria to help reseal cracks. Armstrong herself is involved in a project called Living Architecture, which hopes to develop smart biobricks capable of recycling wastewater and generating electricity. It looks at how metabolic fuel cells created by experts at the University of the West of England, can be used for that purpose.

Such fuel cells, which are contained within ceramic blocks, could be used as the basis for what Armstrong calls “living tiles”. “We’re going to see the use of two materials – one is glass, the other is ceramics. Ceramics is going to make a huge comeback in terms of these tiles. Ceramics are good because the porous materials in ceramics are great membranes for the passage of nutrients and water through them.”

Armstrong sees the kind of living units that will be part of the infrastructure of our homes as working like “a cow’s stomach”, in which there are different processes happening in different chambers with different starting points and different end points

“If we applied that process to something going on within the use of resources within the home, we could start with grey [dirty waste] water and look at what we can do with that. We can make fresh water, we can produce electricity. We can produce oxygen. We can take the biomass in it and transform that in a number of different ways.”

She believes that many will like the aesthetics that will come with this metabolic revolution. Some might like, for instance, the gurgling sound of the things. Others the visual style. There will, she says, be windows that are like “aquariums, bubbling with life”. “With for example,” she says, “the systems that we develop to clean water, we have the potential to get beautiful designs. If you’ve seen a lava lamp that’s the kind of quality of aesthetic experience we will get – the idea of bubbles and light and tiny little specks of particles moving through columns or sheets of glass. There will be beautiful choreography of those kind of spaces.”

The technology will also bring with it a change in the way homes and cities function. No longer will systems revolve around delivering fuel and water, and getting rid of waste. Rather, energy will be generated within the building. Water will mostly be cleaned and recirculated within it. It should also, she adds, be highly compatible with digital systems, which will tell us what is going on inside, how much we are saving per quarter in energy costs, or allow us to regulate them.

The metabolic architecture she describes is just one development in a wider shift towards using living materials in architecture. One structure using such materials that has made an influential impression is the Hy-Fi a twisted tower by New York architecture firm The Living. 40ft tall and installed throughout 2014 in New York’s MOMA courtyard, it was made out of bricks fabricated from a combination of corn stalks and live fungus.

This living material revolution, says Armstrong, is well under way, and since it improves the performance of buildings will likely be popular. “Once the technology is properly developed, estate agents and real estate owners will start asking for it. Governments will start saying that there will be tax benefits in choosing some of these more environmentally-friendly processes. There will be consumer demand.”

Futuropoli

The flood-proof city

As more and more coastal areas and islands are becoming vulnerable to flooding, architects and planners throughout the world have been experimenting with projects for flood-proof housing or cities. Among these are the floating houses of Holland, and HafenCity, a quarter of Hamburg which sits on an island in the river Elbe, in which the rule is that only commercial spaces are allowed on the ground floors of buildings and these are equipped with reinforced doors which are closed when the flooding starts.

Meanwhile, architects in New Orleans, are at the forefront of developing flood solutions. One, NOAH, is a pyramid-shaped complex designed to survive whatever severe weather comes its way, and to float in the event of rising water levels. Another, a project backed by superstar Brad Pitt and the Make It Right Foundation, is a simple floating house, designed to rise up on posts.

Waterworlds

Why just have a few floating houses, when you can have a whole bobbing city? Paypal founder Peter Thiel has put his money behind The Seateading Institute, which has been working towards designing Artisanopolis, a floating city which runs on solar and hydroelectric power. It’s a project that could also soon be realised. The institute last year signed a memorandum of understanding with the French Polynesian Government last year, and expressed a hope to begin construction by 2019.

The energy positive city

Positive energy architecture, of the type that generates more energy than it uses, is definitely on its way. Architects in Norway have released plans for the first “positive energy airport city” to be created near Oslo airport. The town will have a car-free city centre, mainly be designed around driverless cars, and use renewable energy sources. And Europe’s first “positive energy” city block has already been designed by Kengo Kuma, the architect of the Dundee V&A, and is called the Hikari building, after the Japanese word for “light”. Its façade of solar glazing generates around 15,000 kWh of electricity each year.

The Medieval-style town

According to architect and entrepreneur David Galbraith the future doesn’t look very much like sci-fi at all. “There’s an alternative future, where build environments start to look very natural,” he has said. “Technology’s end goal is to be invisible. Computers used to fill up a room and now they sit in our pocket.” As our towns and cities are less planned around cars, with new towns mostly planned on grids, he believes, we’ll go back to a more Medieval style of conurbation, with meandering streets, intimate spaces, and decorative design.

The car-free metropolis

What will happen when there are fewer cars, and we can reclaim parts of the city that were once dedicated to the cult of the automobile? Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, an American design and architecture firm, have created a concept sketch of a city in which the streets are filled with tall trees, and the avenues are open for the use of both pedestrians and driverless cars. Bioswales, garden-like landscapings, will remove debris and pollution from run-off water.

Underwater homes

Twenty leagues under the sea could be your future address if the vision of Japanese architectural firm Shimizu has anything to do with it. They believe the oceans are an untapped habitat for humans, and have been exploring a possible design for an eco-friendly underwater city. The structure, called The Ocean Spiral, would cost around £19 billion, and effectively be a massive pod connected to the ocean floor.

The 5G city

The future, we are told, is 5G. That is the technology that will allow us to create super-smart cities in which the internet of things is there in everything, in which cars are driverless, electricity usage is monitored and controlled, big data is omnipresent, and even your piece of loo roll contains a sensor. Some say it will augur in “the fourth industrial revolution”. Others say it sounds like hell.

Martian Settlements

Elon Musk, the man who has proposed that his Space X will get humans on Mars by 2024, with a view to creating a space colony, has only given us the faintest guide to what he imagines a Mars city would look like. An Instagram image he posted showed a large white glowing dome surrounded by similar smaller structures.

But the idea of living on Mars has inspired countless visions. Indeed, each year Mars City Design hosts a competition. Its founder Vera Mulyani has said, “If you want to go to Mars, let’s live, and live happily, and live better than here on Earth. Let’s design a better place for humanity.”