Biomimetic Construction

In recent years architecture has seen the gradual rise of biomimicry as aparadigm for architectural design – witness the increasing appearance of architecturalforms defined by parametric design software, and the attendantinterest in “emergent” self-organizing systems and forms. This developmentrepresents a significant shift in design thinking and methodology – a consequenceof the convergence of ecological thinking, cybernetics, and thecomputerization of architectural production. The aesthetic charge given bysuch form-generating programs is considerable, pointing toward new kindsof “organic” architectural form, not simply “inspired” by nature but somehowlike Nature in their very generation.The factory-based architecture of machine modernism, to which we are heir,is almost entirely based on the productions of single axis mills: saw mills, rollingmills, extrusions, etc. The single axis mill, by its nature, produces uniformsection, prismatic, forms, perfectly aligned not only with the construction toolsand methods of industrialized building culture, but with our drawing tools aswell. So, for example, the T-square and the computer cursor are direct geometric/productive kin to the table saw’s blade, fence, and set square. By contrast,emergent/biomimetic designs are producing complexly curved forms thatwhile mathematically described in Cartesian 3-space, are of another geometricorder, and hence difficult and expensive to build. These are almost alwaysextravagant things to construct. As architecture is beginning to fundamentallyrethink its relation to Nature through the adoption of emergent and biomimeticparadigms, their constructed outcomes remain thoroughly enmeshed in a cultureof excess rather than in simplicity and reduction.One case in point is the development of evolutionary and topological structuraloptimization programs. These parametric software(s) produce extraordinarydesigns for minimum-material, optimized, structural shapes for a given“load space”. The results tend to have a stunning formal kinship with naturalstructural forms (complex curvatures, branching structures, constantly varyingsections, etc.), and offer the promise a new approach to sustainable constructionvia reductions in the volume of construction materials required. However,the construction of such shapes, at the scale of architecture, is exceedinglydifficult. When construction is attempted at all, it tends to use cast reinforcedconcrete poured into sacrificial polystyrene moulds, carved by multi-axis CNCrouters; elegant, minimal, optimized structural form is built using the “bruteforce” of a high-capital tooling and excessive construction waste.The deep, longstanding, disconnect between the cultures of design and construction,and architecture’s current focus on virtual biomimetic form, has generallyexcluded a search for biomimetic methods of construction. Truly biomimeticarchitecture needs to imagine and develop coherent and congruent methods ofconstruction. The dream of building a work by pressing “print”, eyes closed tothe very nature of the constructions that follows, surely will not suffice.This paper will examine these questions, and offer specific examples of sustainablebiomimetic construction methods directly tied to parametric andcomputer-optimized designs. These examples focus on new construction anddesign methods currently being developed in the areas of flexible fabric formworksfor cast-in-place and precast concrete structures, and parametricallydesigned, funicular, masonry thin-shell, “Catalan” vaults.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1