Biomimicry - stealing ideas from nature - has potential to create designs that are highly efficient, with reduced environmental impact. Architects are copying functional systems found in nature to provide cooling, generate energy and even to desalinate water. These can be elegant in their simplicity, such as this example from Zimbabwe:
...there are now several buildings that have ventilation systems based on those found in termite mounds. The Eastgate Centre, a shopping centre and office block in Harare, Zimbabwe, has a mechanical cooling system made up of vents and flues that help hot air out of the structure. “It's the same principle as the chimney effect, but a bit more controlled,” says Professor George Jeronimidis, director of the Centre for Biomimetics at the University of Reading. As hot air rises and flows out through vents at the top of the building, cooler air is drawn in at ground level.
Some of these strategies are not new, but researchers are starting to look harder not only at the systems that heat and cool buildings, but also at the materials used, in an effort to simplify systems, increase efficiency and reduce the embodied energy and carbon in buildings.
Architect Michael Pawlyn (whose firm worked on the Eden Project) believes that part of the challenge is to reconnect people with resources. In the process of borrowing from nature to reduce environmental impact, he hopes that people will learn to treat nature with greater respect.
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