Rachel Armstrong

Rachel Armstrong innovates and designs sustainable solutions for the built and natural environment using advanced new technologies such as Synthetic Biology – the rational engineering of living systems – and Smart chemistry.

The theme of her work is the transition from an industrial era of architectural design to an ecological one as a fundamental change in the impacts of human development on our health and how we live. Drawing together the fields of architectural design, natural and medical sciences, she calls the synthesis that occurs between them “living” architecture where constructions share some of the properties of organisms. This simultaneously ecological, technological, and humanistic practice considers the implications for designing and engineering in a world thrown off balance. By developing “living” technologies, which apply the characteristics of biological systems to perform work, she proposes new standards for sustainable living. Bringing living technologies into proximity with architecture and design, she aims to radically change the impacts of human inhabitation on the environment, so our lifestyles have a net benefit on living systems.

Rachel challenges perceptions, presumptions and established principles around the building blocks of life and society. She creates open innovation platforms for academia and industry to address environmental challenges such as being coordinator for the Horizon 2020 Living Architecture project (2016-2019) and the Active Living Infrastructure: Controlled Environment (ALICE) prototype (2019-2021) to generate new approaches to sustainable design.

Rachel is a Professor at Newcastle University in experimental architecture and a visiting professor at KU Leuven.
Rachel has an optimistic view of our relationship with technology, which she considers to be the way that our ideas are embodied and implemented. Core to her practice is the belief that new ways of thinking can drive innovation and generate technology that can help us overcome seemingly impossible problems to create a better future for ourselves.