Sexy Stairs

Gianni Cavaler had a dream. He had a dream of reinventing the utilitarian stair into one of design significance - to each his own, right? He followed that dream and his Italian company - because all sexy products come from Italy -  Edilco has done just that. They started with precast concrete and were able to create a single element that includes tread, riser, and in the design below even the balustrade. All the concrete designs are even self supporting via the "inner spiral well."



In the 80's they started looking at other materials including metal and glass...

And have experimented with other things such as plexiglass and

fiberglass and other shapes such as DNA...

That has got to defy a handful of codes. 

Bacteria Excretions

In Architecture future, bacteria might be what holds our buildings together. Scientists and students are working on genetically modifying a bacteria normally found in soil to repair cracks in concrete. The bacteria that they are calling "BacillaFilla" consists of 3 types of cells; the calcium carbonate producers, the filaments, and the "glue" producers. The cells start working when they come into contact with concrete and the final product is a crack filler that is just as hard as the concrete and has thereby reconnected the structure.
And to make it even more sci-fi, when injected into a crack the bacteria swims down th crack, knows when it's hit the end because of something called "quorum sensing", then it knows when to stop working because of a built-in self destruct gene.
Of course if this other scientist with these students from this other school succeed  in creating "crack-proof" concrete with nanotechnology, then we won't need bacteria poo and all their hard bacteria research will be for naught.