Biomimicry in Architectural Design

 

Biomimicry
in
Architectural Design

 

Introduction

In the deserts of Arizona and Southern California, animals and plants have adapted over millennia to live optimally in an extreme and harsh environment without exhaustive energy or water consumption. Through the process of creating a visitor center in a desert park, a team of designers have looked to nature to learn ways of how to build in the extreme heat, cold and dryness of the Mojave Desert and applied that knowledge to the design of the building.

Learning from nature has a long history stretching back to the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci and beyond. As scientific understanding and tools have expanded our understanding of the natural world and the efforts of Biomimicry have become more sophisticated. Biomimicry now encompasses studies in the areas of biology and nanotechnology to investigate everything from interactions at a molecular scale all the way up to organizational group dynamics. This diversity of study in terms of discipline and scale makes Biomimicry holistic and more system oriented than more traditional scientific pursuits.

There is no one formula to make a building sustainable. Depending on the climatic zone, latitude and elevation, the issues associated with sustainability; especially in the area of energy, water, and building materials will vary. Biomimicry is one avenue to learn specific ways to adopt nature's way of life to our built environment.

In an age of global climate change, learning from plants' and animals' ability to adapt to the harsh desert environment becomes especially meaningful. It is imperative that today's designers design sustainably; reducing resource and energy consumption and the output of harmful global warming gases. In addition the climate of the deserts of Mojave will only intensify as global climate change progresses. According to "U.S. Global Change Research Program" issued by the White House in 2008 Southern California deserts can expect to see:

• Higher temperatures
• Lower moisture
• Less rainfall annually
• Increased flooding (downpours)
  

 

 

© Roesling Nakamura Terada Architects, 2009