This is what bone cancer looks like as it takes over the body – as interpreted by the artistic eye of Irene Cheng, who studies architecture at the University of Lincoln, UK.
Cheng used current knowledge about how the cancer mutates bone structure over time, acquired in a collaboration with Issam Hussain of the university's school of life sciences, to portray its extreme effects, as shown below in historical photos.
Cheng's project explores how the human body's adaptations to deformations could influence architecture. "It's not about trying to say that cancer is a good thing," she says. Rather, it's about learning from how the structure of the human body can accommodate such fast-growing, extensive changes – and what that could mean for buildings inspired by imperfection, adds Francesco Proto, who is supervising the project.
The project will culminate in April 2015 with a design for a building.
Proto, Cheng and colleagues previously won an honorary mention for their design for a new natural science museum in Berlin, Germany. That building was inspired by another extreme example of biological development: a butterfly's growth inside its cocoon.
Correction, 2 February 2015: The type of data underlying the illustration has been clarified since this article was first published.
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