"Architecture Follows Nature" lecture focuses on biomimicry and collaborative research
An overview of the March 17th event in Los Angeles
Last Monday evening at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, architect Ilaria Mazzoleni and evolutionary biologist Shauna Price tag-teamed a lecture on their joint-work, Architecture Follows Nature, a collection of architectural proposals inspired by various animal skins. It’s a pleasure when architecture publicly acknowledges and celebrates its inspiration from other disciplines, and by sharing the stage Mazzoleni and Price showed their commitment to this cross-disciplinary research, beyond analogy and into the depths of the design process.
Two proposals from the book were presented, one inspired by polar fur, the other by the iridescence of bird features. The reviewer mentioned that the "end result is more about emulating the processes behind certain natural phenomenon than creating an architectural analogy that mimics fur or feather" and therefore may not be formally biomimetic, although biomimetic emulation can work at multiple levels.
Thanks to David Gross for the pointer!
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Sustainable Innovation Network 2010-2012
Comments
A case for hierarchy of biomimicry levels?
This seems like a great case for a hierarchy of levels of biomimicry.
Copying a physical structure in nature would be one level; copying a development process (e.g., evolution) could be another; copying a biological process could be a third level. Not sure how they'd be arranged, but having this kind of classification could be beneficial at least for direction discussion and maybe even research.