Venice, Italy is sinking. To save it, Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters carbon, too.

TED Fellow Rachel Armstrong researches "metabolic materials" -- construction materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can be manipulated to "grow" architecture. Full bio and more links