4 - design with nature

7/30/2019 4 - Design With Nature

1/60

DESIGN WITH

NATURE


2/60

Biomimicry studies nature's models and then imitates or takesinspiration from these designs and processes to solvehuman problems. It uses an ecological standard to judge the'rightness' of our innovations.

After 3.8 billion years ofevolution, nature has learned:What works?

What is appropriate?What lasts?

And finally it is a new way ofviewing and valuing nature. Itintroduces an era based not on what wecan extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.


3/60

Janine Benyus observes that the biomimeticist'snotebook can be summarized by the followingcommandments:

Nature runs on sunlightNature uses only the energy it needs

Nature fits form to functionNature recycles everythingNature rewards competition

Nature banks on diversityNature demands local expertiseNature curbs excesses from withinNature taps the power of limits.


4/60

Name of projectVila OlimpicaLocationBarcelona CountrySpainDates1989 - 1992

The Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry has long incorporated fish-like forms into his buildings. The fish hasseveral meanings for Gehry. It reminds him of the carp his grandmother would serve at the Sabbath dinner, and itwas a good shape to test the capabilities of the early software for computer-aided design. But above all, it servesas a self-imposed reminder to avoid boxy architecture.

The fish have become grander in Gehry's work over the years, developing from a sculptural element into large-scale engineering structures.


5/60

Name of project

Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural CentreLocation

Uluru-Kata Tjuta Park CountryAustralia

Dates1990 - 1995

The design for this Australian aboriginal centre was developed in workshops with the local people. The creation myth of theAnangu describes a battle between two snakes, Kuniya and the venomous Liru. Rocks in the landscape are said torepresent followers of the vanquished Kuniya, while the red stone denotes the blood of battle. Burgess observed the handgestures of an Anangu woman telling this story, and these inspired the snaking form of the building.Various animals thatserve as totemic symbols for this community are incorporated into the form of the building, though this is done in anabstract rather than a literal way.


6/60

Name of project

Beached HousesLocation

White House CountryJamaica

Dates1989 - 1991 [unbuilt]

The architect and critic Michael Sorkin is interested in animal forms becausethey challenge architectural conventions. Whereas buildings are oftensymmetrical and almost always static, a moving animal is neither of thesethings. Projects such as the Beached Houses shown here explore thisapparently fundamental difference. The three houses, called Ray, Carp andSlug, have a similar arrangement of rooms on two floors. They are based onanimals that are 'symmetrical but only until they wiggle'. 'Our effort is tomeasure the space between the fish and the wiggle', says Sorkin, 'This is

the study of a lifetime.'


7/60

Name of projectReyes House

LocationOakland,

California CountryUSA

Dates1991 - 1993

The conservatory roof of the Reyes House is made up of a pair of fibreglass panels modelled on the wings of adragonfly. The wings may be hingedopen on fine days.

This was the first built example of Eugene Tsui's 'evolutionary architecture'. He defines this as 'an architecture thatimplements the evolutionary practices of nature as a synthesis of billions of

years of evolution applied to the immediate needs and circumstances of form, function and purpose'.


8/60

Name of projectMultiplex CinemaLocationMerry Hill,Dudley CountryEnglandDates

1998 - [on hold]

The nautilus is a mollusc related to the squid and octopus. Itsshell is perhaps the most beautiful of many natural forms basedon Fibonacci's sequence. Each number in the sequence is the

sum of the two preceding numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 ... If youdraw lines of these lengths radiating like the hands of a clock,their outer ends trace a spiral.

The spiral appears in the plan of Wilkinson Eyre's multiplexcinema. The client required 20 theatres with different seatingcapacities, which the architects have placed in order of size,

radiating off a central lobby.


9/60

Name of project

Seafront RedevelopmentLocation

Morecambe CountryEngland

Dates

1991 - [competition scheme]

Needing to rebuild its sea defences, the town of Morecambe saw

an opportunity for broader redevelopment of the seafront andannounced an architectural competition. But nothing could haveprepared the council for one of the entries it received.

Birds Portchmouth Russum responded with a scheme based onfour colossal constructions fashioned after the local delicacy,Morecambe Bay shrimp. Dotted along a coastal boardwalk, the

buildings were to comprise a marina, amusement arcade, theatreand lifeboat station.


10/60

Name of projectDarwin Centre Phase 2

Natural History MuseumLocation

London CountryEngland

Dates2001 - 2007

The Darwin Centre, Phase Two, nests an opaque, rounded form within a transparent, box-like envelope. The architects sawthe rounded form as purely sculptural at first. Gradually, however, the metaphor of a cocoon inside a glass specimencontainer became inescapable.

As the project developed, the architects were forced to modify their initial design. It had been basedon a smooth plaster finish, and they found that this might crack. This led them to run steel reinforcing bands around thecentral form, giving it a woven appearance more than ever like a cocoon.


11/60

Name of projectThe Menil Collection Museum

LocationHouston,

Texas Country

USADates

1982 - 1987

The Menil Collection Museum, designed by the architect Renzo Piano, incorporates many elegant details. The roof isspanned by a system of triangular trusses (running back to front in this picture) and vertical trusses (side to side). Thesesupport rows of curved concrete baffles, designedto admit only diffuse light.

Working with the engineer Peter Rice, Pianomoulded the steel castings that make up each truss into bone-like shapes. This further reduced the overall weight without

loss of strength.


12/60

Name of projectButterfly HouseLocationGodalming,

Surrey CountryEnglandDates

2000 - 2003

Moving through the house is like taking a trip through the life of the insect. The planted area leading to themain entrance is designed to encourage butterflies to lay eggs and caterpillar development. A steel-ribbedwalkway wraps around visitors, like a chrysalis.The organic imagery of the stairs evokes the unfurling ofnew wings. Handrails

of entwined rod and cables extend like legs and antennae. Above the bright conservatory space, colouredfabric canopies flutter like wings drying.The terrace is shaded by fluttering wing-like fabric canopies, layered according to shape, colour and opacity


13/60

Name of projectWaterloo International TerminalLocationLondon CountryEnglandDates1988 - 1993

Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners' Waterloo International Terminal must respond to many forces imposed upon it. This meansthat the building must be able to flex upward and downward, and also sideways.

The terminal arch achieves this flexibility using a system of glass panels. Fixed at its upper edge, each panel is free to slideover the adjoining panels along its other three edges. Although the movement is tiny compared with that of an animal, the

design solution is like that adopted by scaly creatures such as the highly flexible pangolin.


14/60

The division between the living organism and themachine continues to collapse,' More precisely,architecture's relationship to both of these other

entities is in the process of being renegotiated

The triangle of organism-machine architecture wascompleted by Le Corbusier with his concept of the'House-Machine', and by the many from Semper

through to Frederick Kiesler who have favouredorganic analogies in architecture.


15/60

Name of projectGrafton New Hall

LocationGrafton,

Cheshire CountryEngland

Dates2001 -

Grafton New Hall is a reworking of the old theme of the English country house, taking into account contemporary social and

environmental sensitivities.Ushida Findlay's design dispenses with the grandeur that traditionally signifies dominion over the land and the localpeasantry. Instead, the low-level design blends with the landscape.

Radiating limbs house guest bedrooms, a swimming pool, a cinema and so on. The plan is determined by the position of thesun at the time when each space is likely to be used. Occupants follow the sun during the course of the day - as in many a

traditional country house, in fact.


16/60

Name of projectM&G Ricerche Research Laboratory

LocationVenafro CountryItalyDates1989 - 1991

This project for a laboratory for M&G Ricerche had to house areas for both heavy and delicate research, and be adaptableto future shifts in the balance of these requirements. Samyn's solution was to erect a huge tent sheltering flexibly plannedone- and two-storey laboratory "buildings" and heavy plant.

The membrane structure is not simply an extruded sleeve, but, stretched over a series of gently rising and falling space-

frame hoops, tapers at each end to form a caterpillarish enclosure.


17/60

Name of projectSwiss Re HeadquartersLocationLondon Country

EnglandDates1997 - 2004

Foster & Partners' design for 30 St Mary Axe makes a distinctive addition to the City of London skyline.The 40-storey tower is, says the architect, 'the capital's first environmentally progressive tall building'. Theunusual form is both a consequence and a symbol of this fact.

The building's shape, structure and ventilation scheme all find a parallel in the class of sea creaturesknown as glass sponges. These have delicate, elongated exoskeletons. They filter nutrients from waterthey suck in at their base and expel from a hole at the top, just as Foster's tower circulates air.


18/60

Name of projectBridge of the FutureLocation[competition scheme]Dates1998

The Bridge of the Future was a competition to design a hypothetical bridge. The architects David Marks and Julia Barfieldtook inspiration from the massive cantilever in the tail skeletons of the largest dinosaurs.

This pedestrian bridge, designed to span some 200 meters, is also a cantilever - its tip merely touches the ground, with allthe support provided at the broad base end. From here, cables stretch like tendons along the bridge in an arc, pulling the

huge steel 'vertebrae' into a giant spine. Like a tail, the structure can flex in response to the weight of people crossing it, orto the sideways pressure of crosswinds.


19/60

Name of project

Retail WarehouseLocation

Merry Hill,Dudley Country

EnglandDates

1998 - 2000 [unbuilt]

In 1998, the architects Wilkinson Eyre were asked to design a warehouse for a dullretail park. Their initial thought was to make an eye-catching, amorphous 'blob' of abuilding. But the cost soon forced the architects to move to a perfectly roundbuilding.

The squashed spherical shape soon began to resemble a sea urchin. As in a seaurchin, it is symmetry that permits the use of repeated, identical structuralcomponents. Wilkinson Eyre chose to accentuate the similarity by inserting small

spacers at regular intervals between the building's outer cladding and the waterproof

membrane below, giving the building its pimply appearance.


20/60

Name of projectMilwaukee Art MuseumLocationMilwaukee,

Wisconsin CountryUSADates1994 - 2001

Santiago Calatrava's architecture is marked by its conspicuous engineering and expressive use ofconcrete. In his recent addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, he uses a series of concrete beams toform a massive cantilevered sun-screen, or brise-soleil. The dramatic structure, which may be read asa bird with wings outspread, or as a whale's tail about to disappear beneath the water, has become apowerful symbol for the museum and its city.

The gallery interiors are equally zoomorphic. This vaulted white arcade resembles the ribcage of somebleached carcass, or the enlarged gills that the basking shark uses to filter its plankton diet.


21/60

'In what style shall we build? There is theproblem of what to call the style, howeverOrganic has lost its precision, and tends tobe applied loosely to anything with a fewcurves. Labels have been proposed suchas 'biotechnic' or 'technorganic', but these

imply a restrictive dependence of biologicalform upon technological means.

Biomorphism, a term

coined during the Art Nouveau period,remains more specific than 'organic', butsuggests that it is only shape that matters,whereas it is also. patterns and

mechanisms of building use and operationderived from biological models that interesta number of architects today.


22/60

Change in architectural fashion for one image -consciousclient is a bellwether for a huge shift away from themechanistic towards the biological in aesthetics and culturalrhetoric. Businesses no longer speak of re-engineering, but

of adaptation and evolution, and everything from film tofashion to fine art is obsessed with life science. Paradox

biologically, the automobile industry is in the vanguard this

shift, using the full range of visual media to insinuate aconnection between machine and nature. Advertisements forcars now routinely feature bio logical images, from dolphins

to DNA, while Britain the well-known geneticist Steve Joneshas appeared on television to promote the 'genetic

engineering' of the Renault Laguna.


23/60


24/60


25/60

Art Nouveau faded because it required too muchdesign time, expensive skills and customcomponents and the same might be said for the

concrete expressionism of the 1950s). Today,computers promise to alleviate these difficulties.


26/60

Christopher Alexander writes; 'When we look at the

most beautiful towns and cities of the past, we arealways impressed by a feeling that they arc

somehow organic. This feeling of "organicness," is

not a vague feeling of relationship with biologicalforms. It is not an analogy. It is instead, an accuratevision of a specific structural quality which these old

towns had.... and have.'


27/60

There is no moral imperative for thisnew architecture. Just because it seeks

to follow nature does not mean that it is'right' or pre-ordained. But as Aristotleobserved, if there is a better answer to aproblem, then nature has probablyalready found it. It is now up to

architects and biologists, technologistsand engineers to find those answers too.


28/60


29/60


30/60


31/60


32/60


33/60


34/60


35/60


36/60


37/60


38/60


39/60


40/60


41/60


42/60

In particular, machines are adopting

increasingly biological means of operation ,The term "biological means of operation" refershere to self-replication and development of

computer-generated forms, opening theprospect of an architecture without architects.


43/60

WHAT

ISBIO-

ARCHITECTURE?

The noun bio-architecture comesfrom the union of the

Greek word bios(=life) andarchitecture, tounderline the

association betweenhealth safeguard andengineeringcompetence


44/60

GREEN ISSUES

Policy issues arising from concerns about the "environment.Various environmental problems arise from economic activity

and in particular from economic growth. These includeclimatic change due to excessive usage of fossil fuels,

deforestation, erosion, extinction of plant and animal species

and loss of biodiversity, and health problems due to air andwater pollution, radiation, and excessive use of fertilizers andpesticides. There are serious doubts as to whether economic

growth at present and prospective rates is sustainable, orwhether it is leading the world towards massive catastrophe.

GREENHOUSE GASES


45/60

GREENHOUSE GASES

Carbon emissions tending to increase the proportion of

carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth's atmosphere. This is

believed to have a greenhouse effect, decreasing radiation ofheat from the earth and causing temperatures to rise. Thiscould cause climatic changes, and raise the sea- level by

melting part of the polar icecaps. It has been suggested thatthis could be prevented by introducing carbon taxes todecrease emissions of carbon dioxide, and by haltingdeforestation in tropical areas and promoting reforestation oftemperate

areas of the world, since trees act asa sink for CO2

GREENFIELD


46/60

GREENFIELD

DEVELOPMENTA Factory erected on a previouslyundeveloped site, as contrasted with

extending or converting an existing plant. Greenfield;development allows firms to avoid the congestion andpollution problems of the areas around many old sites. It alsoallows an old plant to continue in use while its successor is

being built. A disadvantage of Greenfield development is thatit may be necessary to invest in providing new sites withpower, transport and other facilities already in place in an old

site. Greenfield developments are also liable to costly delaysthrough planning objections from prospective neighbors andenvironmentalists who prefer

Greenfield sites to remain green fields.


47/60


48/60


49/60


50/60


51/60


52/60


53/60


54/60


55/60


56/60


57/60


58/60


59/60


60/60

4 - design with nature

Documents