Professor Rachel Armstrong

Rachel Armstrong started out as a doctor before experiencing a life-changing moment in India that put her on a path to… designing living buildings. The Senior TED Fellow pioneered a type of experimental, sustainable architecture that investigates a new approach to building the future city with ‘living materials’.  She is a pioneer of an approach where buildings of the future will be able to self-heal. Taking inspiration from the properties of natural systems, Rachel 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 threat of climate change makes this self-sufficient construction more important than ever. Example projects include growing artificial reefs below Venice to stop the city sinking into the sea, which she lucidly explored in her science fiction book, Invisible Ecologies. Her approaches are crystallised in a series of discipline-defining books from her TED-commissioned Living Architecture and her recent title Experimental Architecture. 

Rachel brings her philosophy of “black-sky thinking” to her audiences which enables them to suspend normal logical thinking in order to radically reframe and tackle the innovation challenges they face. Designers of all kinds from footwear to electronics, furniture and urban planning will be stimulated by Rachel’s radical approach to design thinking and making. The approach offers both a new way to relate to the natural world and a more sustainable way to design and build our cities.

Her approach is outlined in her TED talk and TED book on Living Architecture. Rachel is a professor of Experimental Architecture at Newcastle University, a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, a Rising Waters II Fellow with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and a TWOTY Futurist.

Selected Press links: Features in Dezeen, The Guardian, The Irish Times, It’s Nice That, Ecologist

TEDGlobal, Rachel Armstrong, Architecture that Repairs Itself?

GIZ Tech2D, Rachel Armstrong, Diversifying Sustainability Approaches