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"If I had to get a new Ph.D. now, I'd get it in polymer engineering - the manipulation of matter."
- Bart Kosko

Self-Healing Building  
  A building that responds to stresses or cracks in walls by healing the damaged portion.  

It was a beautiful room all right, with opaque plastex walls and white fluo-glass ceiling, but something terrible had happened there. As it responded to me, the ceiling lifting slightly and the walls growing less opaque, reflecting my perspective-seeking eye, I noticed that curious mottled knots were forming, indicating where the room had been strained and healed faultily. Deep hidden rifts began to distort the sphere...
Technovelgy from The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista, by J.G. Ballard.
Published by Amazing Fact and Science Fiction in 1962
Additional resources -

See also the entry for plastex, which further describes the material.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista
  More Ideas and Technology by J.G. Ballard
  Tech news articles related to The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista
  Tech news articles related to works by J.G. Ballard

Self-Healing Building-related news articles:
  - Self-Healing Metal Coating
  - Nanotech Self-Healing Houses
  - Self-Healing Polymer Autonomous Material System
  - Autonomous Adaptive Structure Uses Shape Memory Polymer

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Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin
Elegant Bivouac Shelter Produces Water And Electricity
AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home

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Science Fiction in the News

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'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'

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't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'

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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'

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'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'

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