Citizen One E9: The City as a Living Organism

In this episode of Citizen One: Exploring Our Urban Future, an urbanNext original podcast series, host Douglas Stuart McDaniel sits down with Dr. Assia Crawford—architect, biodesign researcher, and author of Designer’s Guide to Lab Practice and Bios In Search of Zoe—to explore what it truly means to co-design urban futures with living organisms.Trained as a conventional architect in the UK, Crawford now finds herself running a research lab at CU Denver’s College of Architecture and Planning, immersed in the world of living materials, from fungal networks and photosynthetic ceramics to microbial leather and speculative mycelial architecture. Her journey from blueprints to petri dishes and laminar hoods reframes architecture not as the art of controlling space, but as the ethical and ecological act of codesigning with living systems. Together, they discuss:* The shock of letting go of design control when working with biological organisms.* Why failure in the lab is not a setback but a threshold to deeper understanding.* How the mycelium leather chair became a symbol of decentralized, open-source material research.* Salvador Dali’s prediction that the future of architecture is going to be soft and furry. * The evolution of “contamination as pedagogy”—why Crawford actively tries to infect her students with curiosity.* Her graphic novel Bios In Search of Zoe, written during COVID, and how it became a speculative, feminist, AI-mediated reflection on ethics, ecology, and transformation.* Why AI’s failures—especially in representing race, gender, and age—are the mirror of our own digital biases.* How bio-design is disrupting the patriarchal canon of architecture by inviting more women, interdisciplinary voices, and care-based practices into the lab.* The urgent question: Can buildings decay with dignity? What if architectural materials decomposed not into waste, but into nutrient?This episode is a call to reimagine both the form and function of the city—not as a static object but as an evolving organism, deeply entangled with microbial life, ecological justice, and speculative futures.Chapters00:00 The Future of Design: Living Materials01:50 Dr. Assia Crawford's Journey into Bio Design05:05 Trial and Error: The Scientific Method in Architecture07:36 Cultural Shifts: From UK to US Architectural Education10:54 Hands-On Learning: Engaging with Living Materials15:49 Lab Practices: Scaling Biological Materials for Architecture20:27 Challenging Assumptions: Ethics and Aesthetics in Bio Design25:24 Contaminating Ideas: Shifting from Sterility to Symbiosis27:16 Bios in Search of Zoe: A Graphic Novel Exploration31:58 Visual Storytelling and Personal Narratives34:12 AI and Character Development Challenges37:36 Implicit Bias in AI and Character Representation40:24 Feminist Perspectives in Bio Design43:42 The Spectrum of New Bio Design Practices and Careers 47:09 The Intersection of Biological Materials and Sustainability50:03 Buildings as the Next “Fast Fashion” and the Urgency of Environmental Action54:16 The Role of Decay and Regeneration59:19 The Need for Radical Change in Consumer Culture This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit multiversethinking.substack.com

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