Towards a Nature-Inspired Bio-digital Platform Powered by Microbes as a Circular Economy Infrastructure in the Practice of the Built Environment

This paper examines the role of microbial technologies in fundamentally rethinking the relationship between waste, energy, human inhabitation, and microbial “life.” Based on the Microbial Fuel Cell (an ecologically “just” platform that provides bioelectrical energy, data, and chemical transformation from human waste streams), a series of transactional systems between humans and microbes are outlined and exemplified by the Living Architecture project, the 999 years 13 m2 (the future belongs to ghosts) installation, and the Active Living Infrastructure: Controlled Environment (ALICE) prototype. These nature-inspired “living” infrastructures comprise a combined utility system capable of forming a domestic circular economy based on the microbial commons—a regenerative, transactional system for ecological regeneration founded on microbial metabolisms—that is accessed, understood, and engaged using a bio-digital interface. These simultaneously “sustainable” and “smart” demonstrators substantiate the future trajectory of the wider uptake of microbial technologies in an urban context, ultimately resulting in “Living” cities that are based on microbial (micro)economics and are fundamentally bioremediating.