The Runaway Species. David Eagleman

      Chitra Ganesh and Simone Leigh’s My dreams, my works must wait till after hell

      At first blush, this combination of the living and non-living may only seem useful to generate art projects, but it also forms a solution to the problem of the world’s cracking buildings and roads. Half of the world’s constructions – everything from roads and bridges to high-rises – are made of concrete, a building material that is notoriously vulnerable to the elements and is difficult to mend. To fix this problem, chemists turned to the natural world. They added a particular strain of bacteria to the concrete, along with the bacteria’s favorite food. As long as the concrete is intact, the bacteria lie dormant. But if it cracks, the bacteria become active. Consuming the meal that has been waiting for them, they spawn and spread, excreting calcite that seals up the damage. Thanks to this unique blend of microorganisms and building materials, the concrete heals itself.⁴