The brilliance of bridges and roads that repair themselves | Mark Miodownik

Summary

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TED Talks Daily: The Brilliance of Bridges and Roads That Repair Themselves

Speaker: Mark Miodownik
Date: February 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, materials scientist Mark Miodownik invites listeners to envision a future where our built environment—bridges, roads, and buildings—can repair themselves. Drawing inspiration from nature’s ability to heal, he explores the emerging field of "animate materials" and argues that this innovation could revolutionize infrastructure and reduce waste. The talk examines both the technical breakthroughs and cultural shifts needed to take better care of the things we make.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Humanity’s Mastery in Making Things—and Our Blind Spot

• Celebrating Material Innovation:
  Mark opens by reflecting on human civilization’s drive to invent and craft, from primitive stone tools to lunar spacecraft.

  “This is who humans are. We like to make stuff. We like to dream big. We like to create.” (04:40)

• Our Repair Problem:
  He highlights the universal frustration with potholes and how this symbolically reveals our lack of progress in maintaining what we build.

  “All of our stuff, we’ve got so good at making it, but we’re not so good at repairing it. We’re not so good at taking care of it. And that is our next big task, our next adventure as humans.” (06:06)

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2. Animate Matter: Materials That Heal Themselves

The Inspiration: Natural Multiscale Materials

• How Nature Builds:
  Mark explains how natural materials—from trees to human tissue—are organized at multiple interconnected scales, allowing for self-repair and adaptation.

  “The way nature builds materials is that it stacks every layer on another… Big stuff contains small stuff. We are multiscale materials.” (07:45)

• What Is Life:
  The key to living materials, he suggests, is the information that connects and manages all these scales, enabling repairs.

  “The scales themselves are physics and chemistry, but the stuff that connects them, the information—they check each other, they repair each other… That’s what life is.” (08:43)

Examples of Animate Materials (Real and In-Development)

• Self-Repairing Roads:
  By analyzing how potholes begin as microscopic cracks, Mark's team embeds nanoparticles in asphalt that can be actuated by magnetic fields to fill cracks before they grow.

  “We put embedded nanoparticles into that material, and by actuating it with magnetic field, we can get them to move around and self-repair the microcracks before they become potholes.” (09:54)

• Self-Healing Concrete:
  This concrete contains microorganisms that, upon encountering moisture through a crack, “wake up” and begin to consume starch, producing calcite as a byproduct to fill the crack.

  “When a big storm hits and a crack opens up, the microbacteria wake up…They do a poo and they poo calcite. Yes. They eat their way out of the crack, leaving pristine material behind them and restoring the concrete to 90% of its original strength.” (10:46)

• Self-Disassembling Plastics:
  Addressing pollution from plastic tree-guards, the team incorporates enzymes into plastics, allowing the materials to degrade after serving their protective purpose.

  “We are embedding little tiny enzymes that catalyze the disassembly of those polymers, of those plastics… when [the seedling] is mature, will then disintegrate and become biodegradable.” (11:45)

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3. Barriers to Adoption: Economics Over Technology

• Systemic Waste:
  Despite technical progress, cultural and economic models lag behind.

  “Probably one of the biggest hurdles is the economics at the moment. We have a system where we make stuff, it falls apart, we remake it, it falls apart, and we throw the waste away into the environment.” (12:23)

• Need for a New Economic Model:
  Mark argues that only by factoring the cost of pollution and global warming into our equations will animate materials make full sense economically.

  “The consumerist model doesn’t work for a sustainable future, for a non-polluting future. And I think animate materials will play a really big part in making those futures.” (12:44)

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4. Visions of the Future: Animate Cities

• What Will It Feel Like?
  Mark likens a city filled with animate materials to life within a forest—a place where structures look after themselves.

  “I don’t think it will feel weird. I think it will feel a bit like being in a forest. You go into a forest, all of that stuff is looking after itself, repairing itself, building itself.” (13:07)

• Changing Human Roles:
  He anticipates a shift from constant rebuilding to stewardship, comparing future city-dwellers to gardeners overseeing an ecosystem.

  “Our jobs would be more like gardeners, right? Yeah. The city would look after itself. We could enjoy ourselves, occasionally pruning a road that was drifting off into the wilderness…” (13:29)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Humanity’s Drive to Create:

  “Why do we make so much stuff? Well, it represents who we are.” (04:32)

• On Animate Materials Testing:

  “It works today… we are field testing this now.” (11:58)

• Vision for Future Cities:

  “Perhaps we could make roads that build themselves. And then what would our job be? Our job wouldn’t be to constantly have to repair things, laboriously throw things away, remake them. Our jobs would be more like gardeners…” (13:15)

• On Sustainability:

  “We’ve got to stop, we’ve got to take care of our materials. But we need a new economic model.” (12:33)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:44]: Mark begins—Why humans love and excel at making things
• [06:06]: Identifying our failure to care for and repair what we build
• [07:45]: How nature builds multiscale, self-repairing materials
• [09:54]: First technical example—self-repairing roads
• [10:46]: Self-healing concrete explained
• [11:45]: Plastic innovation for reforestation: self-disassembling and biodegradable plastics
• [12:23]: Discussion of systemic waste and economic barriers
• [13:07]: Futuristic vision: cities that are self-maintaining ecosystems
• [13:29]: The gardener analogy and the promise of a sustainable future

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Summary and Takeaways

Mark Miodownik’s talk is both a celebration of human ingenuity and a clarion call for stewardship. He highlights breakthrough materials that mimic nature’s ability to repair and grow, painting a vivid picture of a future where our cities are as resilient and self-sustaining as ecosystems. The remaining challenge is not technology, but reimagining the economics of our world—valuing not just creation, but also the care and continuity of our materials. If achieved, our roles will shift from constant repairers to harmonious caretakers—city gardeners in an animate world.

Transcript

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[B]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Over the thousands of years of human existence, we've come to master the art of making things. But we haven't gotten quite so good at taking care of the things we make. So how do we do that? Taking inspiration from nature's ability to heal and adapt, materials scientist Mark Miodovnik envisions a future of animate materials that can self repair, self recycle, and even self grow. It's a possibility that could revolutionize our infrastructure and reduce waste.

[D]

If you come and visit me in London, you'll see streetscapes a bit like this.

[B]

Hey, it's Elise here, and I want to quickly describe the image that just came up on the screen behind Mark. It's a shot of a street in London. You see the iconic red telephone box with the glass windows, concrete sidewalk, a road on one side, and businesses on the other with a blue facade. There are a few people walking by in coats.

[D]

And if you see the world through my eyes, you'd see this.

[B]

Mark has changed the slide, and we see the same picture, but this time it's got lots of annotations and markings on it. He has circled the various materials in the image. Glass, concrete, asphalt, and he's named them. We see words like steel, rock, rubber, tarmac, wood, pvc, and more.

[D]

Don't pity me, okay? I love this stuff. We just make so many amazing materials as humans. In fact, that's what we do. We have done that for thousands of years. We make stuff. At the first, we made tools which allowed us to make clothes, and then it allowed us to make shelter to protect us from storms and from the weather. And containers allowed us to store food so we could survive the winters. And then we started to dream big. We started to make boats, and we started to make materials that cured toothache. And we made stuff that could harness electricity. We made airplanes, and we made stuff that could go to the moon. I mean, this is who we are. We make stuff. Why do we make so much stuff? Well, it represents who we are. This is who humans are. We like to make stuff. We like to dream big. We like to create. So that is why civilization gets pushed forward. It's why the ages of civilization are Named after materials. We have the Stone Age, we have the Copper Age, we have all the ages until now. But there's a problem. You're all familiar with an image of a pothole. You've all driven straight into a pothole or on a bike, been thrown off your bike by hitting one of these potholes. They're a menace. If you're on an e scooter, you just disappear right down them. All of our stuff, we've got so good at making it, but we're not so good at repairing it. We're not so good at taking care of it. And that is our next big task, our next adventure as humans. So what would a future like that look like? Imagine a city now of the future. But imagine one that doesn't constantly fall apart, that doesn't constantly have potholes and cracks in bridges, that when a storm hits and a small it's damaged, then it heals itself. What would that be like? Could we do it? Can we make bridges, tunnels, roads, buildings that repair themselves? The answer is some stuff called animate matter. And what is animate matter? Well, animate matter is a different form of material. We're borrowing from nature. It's a form of material that repairs itself, heals itself, actuates senses, the environment. Is it impossible to make? No, we're making it now. People in my lab, hundreds of people in labs all over the world, are making this stuff called animate matter. But to tell you how it works, I first need to take you inside materials. I need to show you how they work. So this is. This is how we material scientists understand the material world. This is how we design new materials. You've got big stuff at the top, and you get smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller. So you can see the natural world, how nature builds materials. You have trees, and then you have whales, and you have mice, and then you have the fleas on the mice and then the hairs on the fleas, and inside those, you have tissues. And there are many types of tissues. We have skin tissue, lips, we have brain tissue. Then you zoom in further, you get single cells, and then you zoom in further and you get the whole molecular machinery of cells. And you zoom in further and you get the DNA, and it's the DNA that builds those machines and the machines that build the cells, and cells build the tissues. And so you get the idea, the way nature builds materials is that it stacks every layer on another, that they are all grown inside each other. Big stuff contains small stuff. We are multiscale materials. And what is life then? What is it to be alive? Well, it's the connection between those scales. The scales themselves are physics and chemistry, but the stuff that connects them, the information, they check each other, they repair each other. If they find some damage, they repair that. And you're doing it now, you are repairing yourself. Now you get a scratch, your body just goes to work repairing it. So nature builds materials, but it builds self repaired materials. Now we've built materials too. We've built amazing massive bridges, cars, phones, We've mastered these different scales. We can zoom in, we can make nanostructures, we can manipulate atoms, we can make transistors. But what we really lack is the ability to connect those scales up and get them to self repair. And that is the big next challenge. Can we do it? Well, look, let me take you through some work that we're doing. We're already making great progress. So self repairing roads. When we analyzed the roads, we realized that big potholes start off as tiny microscopic cracks. And the key to stopping them doing runaway growth into a pothole is to catch them early. If you zoom in now and we started to look at the different structures inside roads, what we found are moltenes and micelles and, and actually they can self repair. They actually can move around, but you need to give them impetus, you need to give them energy. So we put embedded nanoparticles into that material and by actuating it with magnetic field, we can get them to move around and self repair the micro cracks before they become potholes. Another example, self repairing concrete. There are people in the world who've been making this for quite a while now. You can buy this stuff. How does it work? Well, inside the concrete are tiny microorganisms placed there by the concrete manufacturers. When a big storm hits and a crack opens up, the microbacteria wake up. They smell the humid air, they look around for food, they find starch that's been left there by the designers of the concrete. They eat it, they do a poo and they poo. Calcite. Yes. They eat their way out of the crack, leaving pristine material behind them and restoring the concrete to 90% of its original strength. It works today, self disassembling plastic. So we've been working on this problem that you need to put plastic wrappers around small seedlings to grow trees, to reforest the world. But the problem is the plastic itself then pollutes the world. So can we get a material that protects the tree for years on end, but when that tree is mature, will then disintegrate and Become biodegradable? Answer? Yes, we are embedding little tiny enzymes that catalyze the disassembly of those polymers, of those plastics. And we get them into the plastic by wrapping them in a random petropolymer. And that allows them to survive the process, the high temperature process of making the plastic and to survive in the environment until they're needed and then they come out and it disintegrates. And we're field testing this now. So these animate materials I'm talking about, they are really extraordinary and they are possible now we are making them and they make self repairing roads, self repairing bridges and biodegradable materials much more tangible in the future. So what are the problems we face? It's not so much the technical stuff. We can do the technical stuff. Probably one of the biggest hurdles is the economics at the moment. We have a system where we make stuff, it falls apart, we remake it, it falls apart and we throw the waste away into the environment. We do this with roads, we do this with buildings, we do this with electronics, we do this with clothes, we do this with pretty much everything. And we're basically just piling our materials, our wonderful materials, the ones that we've made over time immemorial, we just throw them away as if we don't care. And we've got to stop, we've got to take care of our materials. But we need a new economic model. The consumerist model doesn't work for a sustainable future, for a non polluting future. And I think animate materials will play a really big part in making those future. And when you calculate the cost of that pollution and that global warming, then they'll start to make sense economically. So what would we feel like though, to live in this world, to live in a world that is animate? Well, I think in 20 years time you come to visit me in London and the animate materials are now in the infrastructure and in our phones and in our laptops. I don't think it will feel weird. I think it will feel a bit like being in a forest.

[B]

Right.

[D]

You go into a forest, all of that stuff is looking after itself, repairing itself, building itself. In fact, we could push these animate materials to make themselves. Perhaps we could make roads that build themselves. And then what would our job be? Our job wouldn't be to constantly have to repair things, laboriously throw things away, remake them. Our jobs would be more like gardeners, right? Yeah. The city would look after itself. We could enjoy ourselves occasionally pruning a road that was drifting off into the wilderness. Yeah. Or it had rebuilt a bedroom of yours and you didn't quite like the design. You could push back on it a bit, but that, that is the world we're heading towards. That's the future. A future where we take care of our stuff. Thank you.

[B]

That was Mark mjdovnik speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED Research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Songmanivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balarazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh.

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