New Urban Economies: Architecture beyond buildings

For many decades entomologists studied insects in laboratories to understand everything about them. At some point over the course of the 20th Century, they reached a new level of understanding when they studied how individual species contributed towards a much larger eco system. Take ants for example. Ants not only grow and harvest their own food, they also safely handle material waste (including waste from other species), create their own medicines and disinfectants; in addition to constructing their own living environments from recycled material. They do all this, whilst maintaining soil and nurturing the eco system that they inhabit.

What If we could effectively design our own environments so that they matched the efficiency of the natural world? This arguably is the big challenge for design over the next fifty years.