A consortium of researchers from four European countries is developing a way to tattoo microbial life on the exterior of buildings. These "living tattoos" will be able to suck carbon out of the air, protect the buildings, and even make them glow.
According to the researchers, buildings with a total surface area of 9.4 billion square meters are predicted to be built or rehabilitated in the European Union over the next 25 years. If you're a scientist like Carole Planchette, from the Graz University of Technology, all that space represents a lot more than simple building cladding – it represents a place to farm. But we're not talking about corn and wheat here, we're talking about bacteria and fungi.
Planchette is part of the consortium that has been given nearly €3 million from the European Innovation Council to develop the tattoo technology, through a project known as REMEDY, or its slightly less catchy name: "Archibiome tattoo for resistant, responsive, and resilient cities." She told us that the living tattoos will consist of two layers. The first would be "pigmented, high resolution ink that defines the visual pattern."
"A second living layer – a thin biofilm that develops from microorganisms delivered via the application of biological ink," would then be applied, Planchette said. "This biofilm is expected to remain thin and thus mostly transparent, though some slight coloration or texture variation may occur. The aesthetic impact will be carefully studied and dedicated tests are planned as part of the project."
Beyond the aesthetic impact of the project, Planchette and her colleagues believe the living tattoos can have additional benefits.
”The aim is to create a beneficial microbiome for buildings that is resistant to pathogenic microbes and repairs superficial cracks on its own,” said Planchette. “Additional benefits will range from carbon sequestration and oxygen production to bioremediation, among others.” Planchette also told us that the living inks to be used could be tuned to lend their bioluminescent ability to the project, making some buildings glow.
Planchette told us that for now, the project is keeping information about the microbes that will used in the ink close to the vest, but that the team is looking for those organisms that will be able to form "stable, functional consortia."
Currently, Planchette's role in the project is to develop an ink-jet printing technology that will be used to spray the tattoos onto building materials. That's not as simple a task as you might imagine, as off-the-shelf inkjet printing heads are too small to dispense the colonies of microorganisms which are expected to cluster together in millimeter-sized clusters.
”I am confident that we will develop suitable inks and the customized inkjet technology within the project duration,” concluded Planchette. "I also expect that we will find suitable microorganisms that survive in the ink and under the stress generated by printing. It will be interesting to see whether we succeed in making this process already fully reproducible over the next four years. Using living - thus evolving - inks for industrial processes such as inkjet printing, which tolerate little parameter variations, is a challenge, as we are entering uncharted territory with the REMEDY project."
Source: Graz University of Technology
