The Vitality of Matter and the Instrumentalisation of Life

Artists and researchers Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of SymbioticA, based at the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia, are internationally renowned as pioneers in the field of biological arts, challenging audiences with their tissue engineering projects. Catts and Zurr discuss how synthetic biology has increasingly become ‘the new frontier for exploitation’ and why there is currently ‘a resurgence of the application of engineering logic in the fields of the life sciences’ in which life itself becomes a raw material.     

The City Beyond Analogy

Is the city really all that complex? Can urban social behaviour be explained in the evolutionary drama of cross-species competition? Is urban self-organisation in fact the urban norm? Is the emphasis on systems that the ‘system city’ tag conjures up unduly restrictive? Colin Fournier , Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), prods and probes the precepts behind the System City issue, while being simultaneously fascinated and enthralled by it.