Natasha Chayaamor-Heil

Living organisms have been progressively used by designers to propose alternative design outcomes aiming towards more ecological aspects. The design development and manufacturing of new materials or design components from living organisms are more achievable in textile, fashion, or product design than in architecture and construction due to the scale, multi-layer constraints, and requirements. The aim of this paper is to investigate the interdisciplinary framework, the opportunities, and limitations of introducing living organisms into the design process, including the implementation from the design ideas to prototyping until commercialization. In this paper, we focus on three types of living organisms: algae, bacteria, and fungi. Firstly, we overviewed and studied existing projects and experimentations to understand the design process and fabrication of living organisms in other domains in comparison to architecture. Secondly, we selected three case studies in architecture for each organism to analyze. We collected the data and conducted interviews with multidisciplinary experts involved in each case. Our findings show a better understanding of the potential to integrate living organisms in architectural design, the advantages, and the difficulties towards ecological awareness. The results from the interview and a comparative analysis show the advantages and constraints of each case. The future outlooks towards the use of living organisms as part of design in architecture are also discussed.

This article provides an overview of recent advances in the development of nature-based material designs in architecture and construction fields. Firstly, it aims to classify existing projects and ongoing researches into three types: bioinspired, biobased and living building materials. Secondly, selected case studies absolving different functions in building, are analysed to identify new opportunities and contemporary challenges of different nature-based approaches. The main gaps are identified between the progression at a theoretical level in laboratories and real-world application. Particulary, the challenge is to implement existing and future bioinspired, biobased and living building materials in large scale designs and architectural contexts. The authors also discuss different aspects of the inspiration and the use of nature to improve better the design of materials properties, robustness, durability, including sustainable awareness. Finally, an outlook of promising avenues for future interdisciplinary research and specific questions associated with methods and techniques of implementation of the different types of bioinspired, biobased and living material designs and fabrications in architecture are highlighted.

The term “bioinspiration” defines a creative approach based on the observation of biological principles and transfer to design. Biomimicry is the recent approach, which describes a large field of scientific and technical activities dealing with an interdisciplinary cooperation between biology and other fields with the goal of solving practical problems addressing innovation or sustainable development. Architecture has been influenced by many aspects of natural and social sciences, among these, biology is currently blending into design activities. Bioinspiration has evolved and shifted architectural practices towards numerous innovative approaches through different bioarchitectural movements from the past until the present. However, there is a blur of biomimicry within bioinspiration in architecture between the direct copy of mere natural forms and the true understanding of biological principles, which is the pivot of sustainable development. The main challenge remains in the gap between the profound knowledge of biology, its related scientific fields and the creative process of architectural design, including cross-disciplinary collaboration between architects and biologists. This entry presents main bioarchitectural movements and how it leads to today’s biomimicry. It proposes to define biomimicry methodologies and how this approach applies to architectural design contexts through the study of existing case studies. The opportunities, challenges and the future outlook of the field will also be discussed.

Le biomimétisme inspire l’innovation dans différents domaines. Il a un impact significatif dans le champ de l’architecture, où il peut conduire à des innovations pour concevoir un environnement bâti durable. En tant que champ interdisciplinaire, l’architecture est influencée par de nombreux aspects des sciences naturelles et sociales. Parmi ces influences, l’inspiration de la biologie est actuellement dominante. Le cadre de la conception bio-inspirée a évolué et s’est transformé en différentes approches innovantes en grande partie du fait du développement de l’informatique et de son usage en architecture. Cet article vise à identifier les principales caractéristiques de l’architecture biomimétique, au regard de l’architecture bio-inspirée et à travers un état des connaissances dans le domaine et une étude de cas significatifs. L’objectif est de montrer comment l’usage de méthodologies de conception biomimétique pourrait conduire à des innovations en architecture en vue de répondre aux enjeux environnementaux actuels. Toutefois les architectes ne disposent pas encore des moyens d’accès à ces méthodologies biomimétiques pour les utiliser efficacement, aussi nous présentons à la fin de cet article les caractéristiques d’une plateforme d’outils qui pourrait faciliter la conception biomimétique dans le champ de l’architecture.

Major problems worldwide are environmental concern and energy shortage along with the high consumption of energy in buildings and the lack of sources. Buildings are the most intensive energy consumers, and account for 40% of worldwide energy use, which is much more than transportation. In next 25 years, CO₂ emissions from buildings are projected to grow faster than in other sectors. Thus, architects must attempt to find solutions for managing buildings energy consumption. One of new innovative approaches is Biomimicry, which is defined as the applied science that derives inspiration for solutions to human problems through the study of natural designs’ principles. Although biomimicry is considered to be a new approach for achieving sustainable architecture, but there is still not enough access for architects to make use of it, especially to implement biomimetic design strategy in architectural project. The main objective of this paper is to raise awareness of architects making use of biomimetic strategies with better accessible facility. We propose to create the tool setting relationship to formalize and bridge between biological and architectural knowledge, along with investigative tools to investigate the ability of reducing energy consumption by applying the biomimetic strategies on efficient-energy building design. This article hypothetically proposes an investigative tool based on Bayesian networks for testing the rapid result of choices from natural devices according to specific multi-criteria requirements in each case study.