Paramateriality: Novel Biodigital Manifolds

In this chapter Marcos Cruz suggests a new way of biointegrated design which explores non-building, unthinkable novel materials that are products of in-vivo research on living organisms and forms that are physically built and yield new aesthetics, resulting from novel hybrid techniques of production. Nonhuman creativity comes from this new aesthetics and from the in-vitro mathematical systems and material computation that run parallel. Not only a new aesthetics is put forward, but also a new way of dealing with environmental issues, critical to future living. The chapter dwells on the shift from the performance of materials to their performativity, as a way of explaining the interactivity between materials and their broader ecology. Moreover, through his work as teacher and as practising architect, the author illustrates how nature itself is potentially programmable matter.