Buildings of the future may be lit by collections of glowing plants and designed around an infrastructure of sunlight harvesting, water transport, and soil collecting and composting systems.
Buildings of the future may be lit by collections of glowing plants and designed around an infrastructure of sunlight harvesting, water transport, and soil collecting and composting systems. That’s the vision behind an interdisciplinary collaboration between an MIT architecture professor and a professor of chemical engineering.
The light-emitting plants, which debuted in 2017, are not genetically modified to produce light. Instead, they are infused with nanoparticles that turn the plant’s stored energy into light, similar to how fireflies glow. “The transformation makes virtually any plant a sustainable, potentially revolutionary technology,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “It promises lighting independent of an electrical grid, with ‘batteries’ you never need to charge, and power lines that you never need to lay.”
But Strano and his colleagues soon realized that they needed partners who could expand the concept and understand its challenges and potential as part of a future of sustainable energy. He reached out to Sheila Kennedy, professor of architecture at MIT and principal at Kennedy and Violich Architecture, who is known for her work in clean energy infrastructure.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Glowing nanobionic watercress illuminates the book “Paradise Lost”. CREDIT: Strano Research Group
