The year is 2408. Most of humanity has been obliterated by a natural cataclysm – the war for natural resources has depleted the last remaining ones so that people have already colonized Mars centuries ago in search for a new life. However, the Red planet proves to be too dry for life to flourish, and a small group of renegades sets off to Venus with the hope to find a steady source of water and a new colony. Upon arriving on Venus, the surface of the planet is too hot to live on, but the atmosphere proves to be an abundant mix of heat, moist and life-makeup chemicals to foster life to flourish. The first settlers design a compact deployable system which grows self-sustainably, expands rapidly and builds itself using DNA, sound, light and nanotechnologies as raw building materials. The main building element of the new habitat is the bioengineered DNA of the bioengineered bacteria producing cellulose. DNA is imprinted with and carries Earth’s basic genetic information required for life genesis to any point in the galaxy. This acts as an encoded message to outergalactic life forms and even upon dying, the microorganisms leave the DNA information at any new habitat at micro level – even if life perishes, the genetic make-up will be latently present and indesructable, so that it can become the stepstone of new life and be deciphered either by natural evolution, or by evolution by design performed by advanced civilizations which would have the intellectual and technical capacity to decipher the hidden message. This DNA information will be embedded in the houses and cities of Venus as a form of insurance in case of a cataclysm in which everything perishes – so that a new civilization can resurrect from ruins. The main philosophy is natural resource material use without commercialisation, so that we do not have a repeat of the energy and natural resource crisis which happened on Earth.
The planetary sounds of Venus, of a wide spectrum of frequencies, both low and high, are abundant – yes, the planet has its own voice! The embedded acoustic information from the sounds of the planetary vibrations is used to design the spaces according to the most favourable acoustic parameters for the future occupiers – low-frequency vibrations contain acoustic information according to which the parameters of structural supports and loadbearing elements could be determined, while higher frequency sounds, which are very powerful on Venus, guide the enclosing elements’ growth and shape formation. The growing behavior of bamboo and matter-production behavior of pre-programmed bacteria are of utmost interest – plants and microorganisms react to acoustic information and therefore sound can be used as a design tool to guide or manipulate behavioural patterns to a desired effect. On a psychological level, the soundscape of the planet will be transliterated into an excellent interactive acoustic experience, translating the environmental acoustics into internal experiential landscapes to create a new type of habitable milieu in which sound subconsciously positively affects habitants. On a technical level, sound energy and planetary variations can further serve as useable energy by converting the massive amount of acoustic energy into energy for life functions. At present, we have access to recordings of the planetary sound (quoted below) which gives us enough base material to start off with, but a much more detailed acoustic analysis of Venus is necessary for the next steps.
Synthetic biology will be used to engineer smart materials – microorganisms modified at the nano-level which absorb light and then retain it to glow at night, thus serving as a natural lighting system (this system has already been developed and implemented by scientists at MIT and a French design firm). Light will also be consumed by pre-programmed genetically engineered Cyanobacteria – and converted into glucose to be used by Acetobacter Xylinum bacteria to feed on and in turn produce abundant amounts of cellulose from which to build the enclosing elements of the new cities. The building skin is mostly organic but incorporates non-organic nanotechnologies (recycled bagasse ash and steel dust) for added rigidity and insulation purposes. Other bacteria, the bioengineered Raistonia eutrophabacteria will eat up CO2 to produce fuel and another type, Bacteria will also consume sulfur abundant in the atmosphere to produce paper-like matter used for insulation.
