Can a building behave like a forest—by generating its own energy, absorbing naturally available water, and producing no waste? This was one of the prompts behind the design of the Bullitt Center, a six-story office building in Seattle, Washington.
Constructed in 2013, the building aims to mimic a forest of Douglas firs—trees that once covered the area now occupied by the city—by taking everything it needs from the environment around it and producing no toxins. Standing 30 meters high, the five-sided building harvests all of its water from rainfall, while all of its waste is composted on-site and returned to the soil. A tree-like canopy of 575 solar panels allows the building to be a net positive energy generator, creating about 30 percent more electricity than it consumes.
Buildings like this are exactly what the world needs to reduce energy consumption and help combat—or reverse—climate change. For inspiration, architects are turning to the science (though it’s perhaps also an art) of biomimicry: the practice of imitating nature’s ecosystems, processes, and organisms for sustainable solutions to human problems.
Humanity has always taken inspiration from nature—think Velcro and the small hooks on plant seeds, cathedral domes and eggshells, the nose of a bullet train and a kingfisher’s beak. But biomimicry in architecture has the specific intention of lessening buildings’ impact on the environment. There’s a clear need for this: Building operations, together with construction materials and processes, are responsible for 47 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
Following in nature’s footsteps has already led to the creation of innovative building materials that are far more sustainable than traditional products. Inspired by coral reefs, the US company BioMason, based in North Carolina, grows biocement that traps carbon in the production process, a total reversal of what normally happens when cement is made (traditional cement manufacture accounts for between 7 and 8 percent of global emissions).
BioMason takes recycled bits of granite and then adds bacteria, calcium, and carbon to stimulate activity that produces calcium carbonate, essentially recreating the process of how corals form their skeleton. The carbon-neutral biocement—whose creation emits 99.4 percent less carbon than the most commonly used form of cement—has already been applied in both government and commercial projects across the US and Europe.
Then there’s Biohm, a company that realized there’s no such thing as waste in nature. Having noted the decomposing capabilities of mycelium—the strong and flexible root fibers of fungi—it has harnessed this process to recycle non-natural materials, including plastic, using this as feed to “grow” biodegradable mycelium insulation panels in a carbon-negative process that sequesters at least 16 tons of carbon per month, according to the company.
Building with reimagined materials is one of the successes of biomimicry, but nature also shows us how to build with less. “Some interesting examples can be found in projects that think of natural geometries and how to create complex shapes with less building materials,” says Bea Spolidoro, a principal at Fisher Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mimicking structural shapes found in nature can ultimately reduce the carbon footprint of construction, she says.
One such example is the Eden Project in Cornwall, designed by Grimshaw Architects. Two greenhouses—one of which boasts the world’s largest covered rainforest—are housed in geodesic domes on the site of a reclaimed clay pit, an uneven building surface. The models for these domes were soap bubbles, which helped generate a building form that works regardless of the site’s ground levels.
The construction industry tends to be resistant to change, but architect Michael Pawlyn—one of the main designers on the Eden Project and founder of the architectural studio Exploration Architecture—sees people in the industry finally realizing that “business-close-to-usual is not enough.” A longtime advocate of biomimicry, Pawlyn says it has quickly changed from a best practice to, in his eyes, an essential one.
“Five years ago, I would have said that the potential benefits of biomimicry are radical increases in resource efficiency, designing out the whole idea of waste, and delivering far greater well-being,” says Pawlyn. “Now, I would say that it is our best chance of creating an ecological civilization in which we can all thrive within planetary limits.”
But making biomimicry a standard architectural practice might take a while if solutions are hard for architects and engineers to find and apply. That’s why Cynthia Fishman and her team at the Biomimicry Design Alliance (BDA) are creating a kind of one-stop shop for those who want to explore biomimicry designs and products and incorporate them into their work. BDA’s database, Ensprd, made by and for architects, specifically focuses on examples of biomimicry that can be used to mitigate climate change within the built environment.
Fishman, the BDA’s founder and director, wanted to create this tool to make biomimicry more mainstream within architecture. “Architects and designers don’t typically have access to scientific data, and sometimes when they do, it is difficult to apply it to the world of design,” she explains. “And there are tons of biomimicry examples out there, so my hope is that by compiling them into a database, it will make biomimicry more accessible.”
So far, Ensprd—which is funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation—is made up of three categories of entries. The first features concepts that BDA itself has come up with after researching organisms with biomimicry potential. “The hope is that users will take these concepts and implement them directly in their projects, or use them as a jumping-off point,” Fishman says.
The second category focuses on prototypes that have been physically or digitally tested. These are ideas that are ready to be deployed, says Fishman. One example: a building envelope made out of reflective substances, hydrogels, and phase-change materials—substances that can absorb or release heat by changing state. It’s estimated the envelope can reduce a building’s energy usage by up to 66 percent on hot, humid summer days. The design is inspired by the refractive crystals found in the skin of the African reed frog, which reflect solar radiation, as well as the network of filaments in the outer shell of the Hercules beetle, which creates open areas filled with air that can absorb moisture in wet conditions to regulate temperature.
Ensprd’s third category includes examples that have been evaluated and are commercially available. There’s the self-cleaning exterior paint that is also mold-, mildew-, and algae-resistant and was inspired by microscopic bumps on lotus leaves that water molecules can’t adhere to. Then there are designs for wind turbine blades based on the drag-reducing serrated edge of a humpback whale’s pectoral fins. WhalePower, the company that designed these, estimates they can produce 20 percent more energy annually than conventional wind turbine blades.
One of the most commonly touted examples of biomimetic architecture is featured here too: the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, an office-retail complex with 48 brick chimney stacks and fans that passively cool the building (even during the city’s frequent power shutdowns). Its ventilation system was inspired by African termite mounds, which contain intricate tunnels and shafts to regulate their temperature. And it works. In the five years following its construction, the Eastgate Centre used 35 percent less energy than other traditionally cooled buildings in the city.
Each BDA entry includes performance metrics to show how the biomimetic solution works, graphics explaining how the concept originally functioned in nature, and links to the product or project. The relevance of each entry to sustainability certifications is also logged, helping architects see how these solutions link to bigger green concepts—like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Although there are currently 200 entries, Fishman is applying for funding to add 600 more. Ensprd will be continually updated based on topics and functions users request and on new scientific discoveries; designers will also be able to submit their own biomimicry projects to the database.
“I most definitely do think that biomimicry in the realm of the built environment can and will be used to fight climate change,” she says. “Nature can show us sustainable and resilient methods—in terms of energy and water usage, as well as material fabrication and properties.”
Pawlyn agrees: “We have all the solutions we need to make rapid progress on addressing the planetary emergency,” he says. But he believes that biomimicry has yet to really cut through. “We need a tipping point in public opinion that compels urgent action and allows the new thinking to be unleashed—economics aligned with planetary limits, ultra-low-energy materials, buildings that take carbon out of the atmosphere, and much more besides.” If biomimetic architecture is to have any effect, Palwyn argues, people must advocate for its principles and make sure it is used.
Updated 7-24-2022 1:20 pm ET: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of the Biomimicry Design Alliance.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
