The super-exponential rise of the global human population since industrialisation will give way to an equally rapid decline in less than a generation. Every aspect of the built, cultural, economic as well as political environment will dramatically change. This certain, impending transformation is an urgent question for architects to face. In a microbiological turn in

architecture theory, the smallest form of life offers new ways of thinking about the largest question. For billions of years, bacteria have been experts in exponential growth but also of living collaboratively with very limited resources.

When bacteria sense increasing toxicity and declining resources in overpopulated environments, they invent new behaviours, reducing the consumption of resources and diversifying themselves via rapid mutations to be more resilient in the face of an unknown future. They innovate in the face of a crisis.

Bacterial intelligence can act as a guide towards a more adaptive, trans-species and regenerative future.