beyond imitating nature
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urbi et orbi |
Beyond imitating nature.
Manipulating natural processes to create architectural form.
"We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind. [...] Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift. With this profound new knowledge, humankind is on the verge of gaining immense, new power to heal. Genome science will have a real impact on all our lives - and even more, on the lives of our children."1
On the 26th of January 2000 the president of the United States of America announced with these words a completion of a preliminary map of human genome. Although scientists had already sequenced many genomes of simple organisms this a symbolic date technology and human relationship with nature entered a new era. It is an era of biological machines, which surpass the digital ones in a way the water, steam and petrol powered machines surpassed hand tools.
Architecture enters this era only now. In order to realize how could it manifest one needs to draft its evolution dependent on the development of tools and techniques of construction.
Our genetic ancestors don't build shelters, as George Hersey writes: "An African termitary might remind us of Wright, or a Gaudi spire, or of a skyscraper by Hermann Obrist. But no such thought comes to mind when we look at the rudimentary retreats of chimps and gorillas." 2. In its dawn architecture was created by adapting natural shelters such as caves and was dominated by natural forms. Next it was built by arranging fragments of rock, trees, clay or even feces. It was a period of organic form resembling structures erected by animals. With a graduate mastering of building material processing the form were becoming more abstract and orthogonal resulting in modern "carpenteredness" of the world we live in.
Nevertheless, as Alberti writes, "Great experts of antiquity have instructed us that a building is very like an animal, and that Nature must be imitated when we delineate it." 3. However it was only an imitation mediated by systems of proportions and the true link with nature was the scale of building elements used, such as timber, brick or stone. The industrial revolution broke this link giving way to total abstraction by inventing "fluid" materials: steel and concrete. In this period nature manifests itself through mathematics and structural engineering. First attempts in using analog computing such as hanging models of Gaudi or later experiments of Otto Frei announced a turn towards direct modeling of natural systems, which became common with an advent of digital computing. Computers made simulating natural processes possible. Biomimicry, copying nature's solutions developed through evolution, became popular. But using even the most advanced programming tools and digital construction machines still produces only a rough approximation of nature.
The era of genomics surpasses those constrains by programming DNA of living organisms. In a broader perspective it goes beyond the biological metaphor by direct application of biology, replacing digital machines by biological ones. It is not only using cutting edge technology, but a new look on traditional techniques based on, both organic and inorganic, natural processes.This new horizon that opens up for architecture requires a systematic repository of knowledge about those processes together with methods of controlling them and applying to specific areas of construction.
Building industry consumes approximately half of the global production of energy 4. Most of which is produced using fossil fuel propelling emission of carbon dioxide. It is estimated that the energy consumption by building industry will continue to grow.
Strategies to limit greenhouse gasses emission are not solving the problem of energy consumption. The most energy-intensive are technologies of building material production, e.g. cement. Moreover the ability to absorb carbon dioxide by trees is counterbalanced by the carbon footprint of timber processing.
Changing the current paradigm of subordinating natural elements to an abstract form for a model of smart manipulation of their organic process of growth we can considerably limit energy consumption and make buildings no longer with zero carbon footprint by with a negative one.
Proposed perspective reaches beyond production of building materials into the issue of architectural form. It abandons digital simulations inspired by nature for the sake of building based on symbiosis with nature.
Architecture created this way not only inherently follow the canons of proportion previously extracted from observation, but actively cooperate with their inhabitants, using "language" common to all living organisms, creating a healthy habitat comparable to natural ecosystems. Living buildings are autopoietic, which means they don't wither as traditional building. Finally it is an attempt to overcome the architecture-nature dychotomy.
References
1 Bill Clinton, 2000
2 George Hersey, The Monumental Impulse: Architecture's Biological Roots, 1999
3 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building, 1452
4 U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2011
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