FT Rethink
Architects take inspiration from nature to build a sustainable future
Biomimicry can lessen a structure’s impact on the environment and reverse the ecological damage caused by construction.
“Those who look to the laws of nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the Creator”. So said Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. But can buildings behave like trees? Might nature itself provide the answers to combating climate change? Can we design buildings that are not merely net-zero, but have a net-positive environmental impact?
Buildings account for nearly 40 per cent of global carbon emissions1, coming from the embodied carbon of their materials and emissions from construction and ongoing operations such as heating and lighting. Concrete and cement are among the biggest culprits, together contributing 8 percent of the world’s carbon footprint. Although cities occupy only about 4 percent of global land, they gobble vast amounts of energy, water and resources, whilst throwing out huge volumes of greenhouse gases.
Confronted with the built environment’s hefty carbon footprint and a rapidly warming world, architects, scientists and designers are turning to nature in the search for novel ways to reduce buildings’ environmental impact.
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Borrowing from termites
When wrestling with how to ventilate Zimbabwe’s Eastgate Development – a sprawling shopping centre and office block in Harare, the country’s capital – leading “green” architect Mick Pearce turned to an unlikely inspiration: termites2. Termites build towering mounds punctuated by a complex system of holes and tunnels that enable self-regulating ‘passive ventilation’: the holes allow internal airflow and natural convection, storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. And the insects clearly know what they’re doing: following their lead, Eastgate uses 90 per cent less energy than it otherwise would.
British architect Michael Pawlyn, one of the team behind the hugely successful Eden Project bio-domes in the UK, and founder of Exploration Architecture3, a world leading design firm operating in the field of biomimetic construction, takes a similar approach. “The big picture view is that we need to learn to integrate everything we do as humans into the web of life that supports us,” he says.
While humanity has long drawn inspiration from nature for both aesthetic and practical design purposes, so-called biomimetic design imitates nature’s ecosystems, processes and organisms for the explicit purpose of finding sustainable solutions to human problems. In the construction sector, biomimicry aims to lessen a building’s impact on the local environment, or even to create structures that actively reverse ecological damage. In effect, buildings become an extension of the wider ecosystem.
Biomimicry brings resource efficiency
Pawlyn says that specific applications of biomimicry can translate precise biological functions into solutions that work for humans, often in ways that are “much more resource-efficient than conventional ways of doing things.” With a background in both design and biology, he believes that by learning from the adaptations that exist in nature we can rethink materials consumption and circularity in both industry and the built environment.
While the field is relatively new, this approach has already led to vastly more sustainable buildings. Inspired by soap bubbles, pollen grains and dragonfly wings, the structure of the Humid Tropics bio-dome of Cornwall’s Eden Project is lighter than the air it contains, and achieves a massive reduction in steel use while boosting the admittance of sunlight. Zimbabwe’s success with termite-inspired building ventilation has been replicated in Melbourne’s ‘Council 2’ building in Australia. While the Singapore Arts Centre took inspiration from the structure of the Durian fruit to cut energy consumption by 30% and the need for artificial lighting by 55%.
Nature is also offering solutions to the sustainability of construction materials. US-based BioMason grows bio-cement, inspired by coral reefs, that traps carbon during production rather than releasing it. While renewable insulation, such as that made from hemp or wool, offers both a higher heat capacity than mineral wool (making it better at keeping out unwanted heat) and the ability to retain its insulating properties while absorbing moisture, making it ideal in humid environments. Across the sector, with solutions such as these combining with the rollout of renewable energy sources and the installation of electric heat pumps, real traction is being made in efforts to build carbon-neutral homes.
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But some are now concluding that this is not enough. Proponents of regenerative architecture argue that the world must move beyond sustainability, net-zero and carbon-neutral, to net-positive design that actively boosts biodiversity.
Regenerative architecture
For Michael Pawlyn this realisation came as an epiphany on the wings of the 2018 Assessment report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I came to the conclusion that 30 years of sustainable design had not got us anywhere near where we need to be,” he says. “We needed to shift to a new paradigm of regenerative design.”
With the urban population continuing to rise, this is a growing challenge. The UN predicts that, by 2050, 68 per cent of the global population will live in cities4. Some put the housing requirement as the equivalent of building a space the size of New York City every month for the next 40 years.
For Pawlyn, the conviction that this new building space must be ecologically regenerative led him to co-author a book, titled Flourish: Design Paradigms For Our Planetary Emergency, and to call on architects worldwide to declare a climate emergency. More than 7,700 companies across 28 countries signed5.
Farid Mohamed, an engineer at US-based consultancy Biomimicry 3.8 explains how regenerative architecture might work: “If you were going to create a facility like a factory next to a forest, then that urban environment should perform at the same level as the forest next door. It should be able to perform ecosystem functions like stormwater management, nutrient cycling, air filtration, and providing wellbeing for communities.”
Rachel Armstrong, professor of regenerative architecture at KU Leuven, Belgium, and a pioneer of ‘living architecture,’ goes further: “To achieve more than net-zero, we need to think about how buildings transform energy and resources, and make it more valuable to its inhabitants. The only system that is able to do that is not a machine, it’s life itself. So can we take the principles from the living world and incorporate them into our buildings to change their environmental impact?”
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While nature finds myriad, often complex, ways to achieve this, at its most basic the principle is simple – nothing is wasted. One dead tree is food for another. One animal’s leftovers are another’s sustenance. And so on. So, for example, a regenerative home would not flush its wastewater into the sewage system, but harness it as a critical resource: biogas for energy or compost for the soil.
A long way to go
Yet the world is a long way from achieving even carbon-neutral construction as the norm, let alone creating buildings in symbiotic harmony with their surroundings. Biomimicry 3.8 was co-founded by biologist Janine Benyus, who coined the term ‘biomimicry’ in her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired By Nature, back in 1997. So, why is it not yet more widespread?
“Time and the current incentives,” says the consultancy’s Farid Mohamed. Building processes are entrenched: cement has mostly been made the same way since the Victorian age. But things are beginning to move, prodded by net-zero targets and regulation. Biomimicry 3.8 has seen an “exponential increase” in the past few years in companies seeking help to transform their buildings.
Substantial, systemic barriers remain, however. “The big stumbling block is capitalism, frankly,” says Professor Rachel Armstrong. “In terms of the development of technologies, we’re there. But when you start looking at mass-consumption and mass-manufacturing, this model of creating resource and space doesn’t fit with capitalism. Revaluing waste streams, for example, is really good for communities. Not so good for fat cats.”
It will take government intervention – carrot-and-stick approaches to change the construction industry’s motives – and giving communities tools of empowerment. But the true shift, she explains, won’t happen until there’s no other choice.
“Once blackouts happen, once we start getting electricity shortages, food shortages, having urban farms and waste-based systems that can help you recover after a big flood or natural disaster is a question of survival,” professor Armstrong says. “Where there will be traction is when the climate emergency feels extremely real and people really think about resilience.”
Here, again, nature holds the answers. According to Farid Mohamed and his Biomimicry 3.8 colleague Nick Heier, regenerative architecture creates a more resilient environment that can resist natural challenges. After a research trip in Costa Rica to explore the country’s mangrove systems, Heier says, “Mangroves are one of the best ecosystem engineers that exist. They’re some of the best climate natural disaster resilience structures, and the most efficient carbon sequestration ecosystem.”
“I think we’re at the start of a very interesting learning curve,” concludes Professor Armstrong. “Unfortunately, it’s coming with the Armageddon of climate change.”
1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcarlin/2022/04/05/40-of-emissions-come-from-real-estate-heres-how-the-sector-can-decarbonize; Embodied Carbon - World Green Building Council (worldgbc.org)
2 Passively Cooled Building Inspired by Termite Mounds — Innovation — AskNature; What Termites Can Teach Us About Cooling Our Buildings - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
3 Michael Pawlyn - Leader in Innovative Building Design (a-speakers.com)
4 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, says UN | UN DESA | United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
5 About Us | UK Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency
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