EDITORIAL

摘要

Neil Spiller has had a long association with ArchitecturalI Design (ID) and the visionary in architecture. A veteran guest-editor, this is the sixth issue of ZD that he has edited. His previous ones include his two seminal issues on cyberspace in 1995 and 1998; Integrating Architecture, 1996; Young Blood, 2001; and Reflexive Architecture, 2002. Whereas Neil's issues on cyberspace encouraged us in the Net's infancy to imagine where the virtual might take us, Protocell Architecture persuades us that a very different future is in sight for architectural matter. The innate cumbersomeness and inertness of conventional construction materials and systems, which block any real engagement with ecological processes, is to be overturned by the chemical innovations of synthetic biology - 'protocell technology'. That is, artificial cell systems that self-reproduce and maintain themselves. This might be a tomorrow's world that is being prefigured, but it is firmly rooted in the science of today.