This book examines and defines the field of biomimicry for sustainable built environment design and goes on to translate ecological knowledge into practical methodologies for architectural and urban design that can proactively respond to climate change and biodiversity loss. These methods are tested and exemplified through a series of case studies of existing cities in a variety of climates. Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry will be of great interest to students, professionals and researchers of architecture, urban design, ecology, and environmental studies, as well as those interested in the interdisciplinary study of sustainability, ecology and urbanism.
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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.
GrAB - Growing As Building takes growth patterns and dynamics from nature and applies them to architecture with the goal of creating a new living architecture. The aim of the project GrAB is to develop architectural concepts for growing structures. Three main directions will be investigated: transfer of abstracted growth principles from nature to architecture, integration of biology into material systems and intervention of biological organisms and concepts with existing architecture. Key issues of investigation will be mechanisms of genetically-controlled and environmentally-informed, self-organised growth in organisms and the differentiation of tissues and materials.
The following query by Ali Malmberg on LinkedIn led to an extensive list of suggestions.
Just figured I'd ask because I am very curious, does anyone know of Architecture/Design firms that specialize in Biomimicry research? I just got my BFA in Interior Design at Syracuse University and I am relocating to the Bay Area in May. I am very interested in Biomimicry related to Interior Design/Architecture Firms.
An overview of the FIT process that "identifies the questions we need to ask of our work to achieve more sustainable outcomes." Every projects includes the following characteristics:
Costas Loucaides has posted information on his "... investigation project based in the city of Milan, around the Naviglii area. The experimental project follows from the thesis project in the fifth year of the degree, investigating the potentials of biomimetics in urban regeneration of modern, fast moving cities."
The book opens with a quote from Buckminster Fuller. "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." From there on in Pawlyn sets out to demonstrate how biomimicry offers architects a whole new system to design by. A system that will produce not only radically more efficient and effective structures, with great savings on material and energy costs, but also stunningly beautiful buildings that will have the 'bilbao effect' wherever they are located.
Biomimetics -- Materials, Structures and Processes
Examples, Ideas and Case Studies
Series: Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering
Gruber, P.; Bruckner, D.; Hellmich, C.; Schmiedmayer, H.-B.; Stachelberger, H.; Gebeshuber, I.C. (Eds.)
1st Edition., 2011, XV, 266 p. 123 illus., 53 in color.
ISBN 978-3-642-11933-0
Technology Review describes the work of Neri Oxman, an architect and professor at MIT's Media Lab, to 'print' complex structures using concrete, polymers and other materials. Her work goes beyond initiatives such as "Robo-Brickie Builds a House in a Day" by varying the properties of the material, such as elasticity of a polymer or the porosity and strength of concrete. Columns can be structured with dense concrete on the outside where stress is the greatest and lighter-weight concrete on the inside Porous or composite materials could be used in low-stress areas to allow additional light into buildings.
Gruber, Petra
1st Edition., 2011, 280 p. 466 illus., Softcover
ISBN: 978-3-7091-0331-9
Also available through Amazon.ca
From the Springer website:
- Overview of the present state of research in the field of biomimetics in architecture
- Shows the innovative potential of this relatively young scientific field
- Case studies on vernacular architecture to space exploration
The purpose of investigating the areas common to architecture and biology is not to draw borders or make further distinctions, or even to declare architecture alive, but to clarify what is currently happening in the overlapping fields, and to investigate the emerging discipline of „biomimetics in architecture" [Architekturbionik].