Bioarchitecture draws on principles from nature to help solve technological questions and address global challenges.
Take desert organisms, for example. How do they survive and thrive under extreme conditions? One such desert species is the Saharan silver ant, named for its shiny mirror-like body. Its reflective body reflects and dissipates heat. It’s an adaptation we can apply in buildings as reflective walls, or to pavements that don’t heat up.
Water lilies can teach us how to design large buildings efficiently with smooth pedestrian circulation. Seashells can inspire the walls of large-span buildings without the need for columns. Cells can show us how to develop lightweight suspending structures.
Where most industry-led and research-based approaches focus on the “technology to save us” from climate change, bioarchitecture offers a more sustainable approach that aims to develop a positive relationship between buildings and nature.
Living organisms constantly communicate with the natural world. They move around their environment, employ chemical processes and undergo complex reactions, patterning their habitat. This means living systems constantly model and organize the environment around them. They are able to adapt and, in doing so, they change their environment too.
Can buildings do the same in cities? If buildings could grow, self-repair and adapt to climate, they might ultimately become truly sustainable.
Early examples of bioarchitecture can be found in traditional and early modern buildings. Their architects observed nature to copy its principles and design more habitable, locally made and environmentally friendly buildings. For example, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain, is inspired by natural shapes that give the church its organic form.
More recent examples include using bio-based materials such as wood, hemp and bamboo, or applying biophilia through using greenery on external walls and plants indoors to boost our connection with nature, and restoring the environment by making buildings part of it.
The blue Menelaus butterfly offers another striking example of design solutions from nature. Despite its radiant blue colour, it is not actually blue and does not have any pigments. Producing and maintaining pigments is expensive in nature, as it requires a lot of energy.
The Menelaus butterfly has an ingenious way to achieve its unique color without pigments. Its brilliant blue shine comes from scattering light, similar to soap bubbles glimmering in rainbow colors under the sun, despite being completely transparent. The light is scattered by micro-grooves on the butterfly’s wings.
This is nature’s way to achieve high performance with cheap forms instead of costly materials. Learning from the Menelaus butterfly, we can have windows with climate-adaptable properties—changing their color and scattering light according to the position of the sun. We can design biobuildings that reflect excessive radiation and reduce cooling needs and glare. And the beautiful part is that this may all be done without obstructing views and without the need for shading devices or tinted windows.
Then there is Monstera, a sought-after indoor plant that climbs up the walls. It’s also called the “Swiss cheese plant” for the holes on its leaves. Monstera needs to sustain fewer cells to maintain extra large leaves because of their holes. This enables it to capture more of the sunlight it needs to grow and spread out over a bigger area.
Now imagine if we designed hollow building structures such as columns and beams. This could help minimize the need for materials and cut carbon emissions by reducing the embodied energy that goes into making these materials.
Nature is wealthy, nature is generous. Through bioarchitecture, buildings can dive into that wealth and become a part of the generosity. Truly sustainable biobuildings can be constructed that work with nature and reverse the harm our conventional building technologies have done to the planet.
You can read the original article at theconversation.com