It’s Alive : Buildings, Biology and Biomimicry


So there is an excellent article recently posted on the Smart Planet titled The buildings are alive: in biology, designers and architects seek answers , well worth the jump and the read.  Essentially it focuses on how the built environment is incorporating designs from nature for better efficiency.  From cooling techniques of termite mounds used in the Eastgate Center in Harare, Zimbabwe  to bioluminscent paint that could provide free lighting.

Eastgate Centre uses fans to move cool night air through chambers under office floors, which can be sent through the building during daytime heat. The building is cooled at one-tenth the cost of structures with old fashioned, energy-sucking air conditioning.

Lighting giant Phillips released details of their new bio light.  Essentially  “a wall of glass cells containing a live bacterial culture that emits soft green light by bioluminescence.”

“Professor Neil Spiller, an architect and the new head of the University of Greenwich’s School of Architecture & Construction, said the research team was looking at methods of using responsive protocells to clad cities in an ethical, green and sustainable way.”  ‘We want to use ethical synthetic biology to create large-scale, real world applications for buildings,” he says.  Such cells could be affixed to buildings to capture carbon and they envision creating buildings that are carbon negative.

This notion of how to do things has spawned a whole new field of architecture” Biomimetic Architecture.    Also how do we create building built of more recycled material and material that is recyclable.    Why not take our cue from things that have evolved over millennia to adapt to their environment or been designed through divinity.  Either way you look at it: good choice.

 

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