In this video Rachael Armstrong, interdisciplinary researcher, teaching Fellow at the Bartlett, and member of AVATAR Research Group talks at TED Global 2009 about building genuinely sustainable cities by connecting them to nature. How? Architect Neil Spiller and Rachael are generating metabolic materials from scratch and building architectures from a bottom-up approach to counterpose Victorian technologies. Rachael uses the sinking city of Venice to illustrate how protocell technology can be used to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and create architecture that grows itself.