This seminar explores the frontiers that are opening up across multiple design disciplines as a result of the ongoing revolution in biotechnology, bioinformatics and related fields. In the first half of the course, the seminar studies the relationships that have been historically established with living systems throughout the development of architectural technology and culture. Examined are some of the critical ways in which architecture, agriculture and urbanism have shaped our own genetics, as well those of other plant and animal species since the origins of social organization. It is within this context that the course challenges several entrenched conventions within architectural and environmental control systems design that have sought to separate built environments from the complex interdependency of surrounding ecosystems. In the second half of the course, using each student’s current or prior studio work as a use case, students extend an aspect of the design intentions of the project into a particular experimental area of interest, one that is aligned with emerging biotechnical methods, in terms of the how the architecture might process either energy, water, waste, materials or living systems in a radically different way from conventional expectations. Limited Enrollment.