[caption id="attachment_27079" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Photo: Tom Bonaventure/Getty Images"][/caption]Hannah Devlin has a neat piece up at Times Online about the continuing shift in architecture towards biological and chemical ideologies.  "Likening the city to an organism," scientists are hatching amazing ideas like using fish bacteria to illuminate nocturnal skylines.

There's also speculation about recreating processes like limestone formation -which usually takes nature thousands of years- that eats carbon from the air.

Nanoarchitects are aiming to speed the process up to a matter of days. They believe it could be done simply by coating the walls of buildings with tiny droplets of engine grease. The grease would be laced with a common salt such as magnesium chloride. When the magnesium reacts with carbon dioxide in the air, a solid magnesium carbonate pearl begins to form.

This serves as the seed for the growth of white, wheatsheaf-shaped carbonate crystals. The large surface area of a droplet of grease maximises the interface between the magnesium and the atmospheric carbon, speeding up the rate of the reaction. Within days, the grease would be transformed into a sparkly crystalline coating similar in appearance to heavy frost or snowfall... A green city...would look like Narnia under the White Witch, crystal white and beautiful. The carbon choking our planet could become a harmless decorative feature.

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