Biomimicry is a field of design in which derive inspiration from nature, the design discipline which derive inspiration from nature has been existing for a long time, nowaday, with the advance technology we are able to closely observe closely at the structures and the processes of biological organisms and its effect which enables us to search for new materials, effects, forms and pattern in the most efficient and sufficient way. It has becoming notable for us to see the negative effects of rising population and the usage of natural resources, and architecture is one of the most demanding services that input a significant impact upon the environement. “We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.” as President of the United State Obama said, and Biomimicry is one of many soluations that lead us towards achieving a more environemental and sustainable. As Petra Gruber mentioned “Biomimetics in architecture will help a culture of active environmental design”.
Vertebrae Staircase – Andrew Lee McConnell
Taking the fact that bones are one of the most versatile structure that nature provide us, Andrew Lee McConnell, by simplifying the bone structure of the whale’s vertebra. With the method of reducing the complexity of the bone structure into a single component for the most part of the stairs, and 2 other different components connecting the floor plates, it allowed the designer to easily fabricate the components. The floating effect when users look at the stairs came from none other than the natural structure that nature provide us, with no other hidden supports to the stairs as the structure itself works to transfer loads to the floor plates.
“River Hydrology” by ALEXOPOULOS, Jingya HUANG, Tao SONG, & Liaoliao XI This is a rather interesting example of biomimicry design that is applied specifically upon the river. The project aims to address the problems caused by flood and how to utilize such conditions to “mine” the vast energy coming from the velocity dynamics of the water flow. The final ideas that resulted to the project were results from both physical and digital simulations of different units with population numbers. They ended up with stability, porosity, intricacy and articulation potentials, these main attributes that they draw out from analyzing the forces of the river flow are the main properties that “could make sure the units stick on fixed structures” The project intended location is at Diver Dart, due to its compatibility with the ideas and challenges they came up with, with potential in floods and have high energy values based on records. The structure is to be placed addresses the higher velocity coastline areas, which are highly potential flood area, giving the structure at the location to protect and reinforce the river banks.
B.2 CASE STUDY 1.0
Aranda Lasch - The Morning Line. The project combines different disciplines together between architecture, music and cosmology. It is also consider to be biomimicry but interestingly instead of looking at living organism on Earth, it focuses upon the relations between stars, bringing upon a complex pattern of networking lines. Based upon a truncated tetrahedron, which is orientated and scaled in ways such that the geometries work together creating a flowing effect. The overall geometry of the project makes it seems to be growing continuously, yet at the same time, decomposing itself. It doesn’t seem to take a final form, which illustrates the idea behind cosmology – evolution without a beginning and end, as well as bringing the audience an interactive environment. Such effect is possible with the assistance of computational design which enables the generation of different patterns and geometries in the pavilion in a logical way.
The polylines embedded upon the faces of the polyhedreas were create by evaluating the edges of the faces and pick from a mid point joining towards a random point on the opposite side. The following iterations are testing with the script with different types of geometries. Truncated Tetrahedron
Isocahedron
Dodecahedron
Octahedron
Polyhedras are “cut” off into smaller scaled geometries, and the previous script were combined. These iterations are tests with the complexity and limits that the script could stand. “Clusters” here refer to the number of times that the polyhedras were “cut”.
Curve Evaluation Value
Dodecahedron 1 Cluster
Dodecahedron 2 Clusters
Octahedron 2 Clusters
Octahedron 3 Clusters
0.0 - 0.5 - 1.0
0.0
0.5
1.0
ARANDA LARSCH MORNING LINE (CONTINUE) Nature itself provides us a large number of precedences in which could highly be potentially used in architecture designs, we all know that something as an abalone shell, that we hardly even take a second look at on the beach would be something that is twice as strong as our high-tech ceramics with only one explaination, “it knows how to organise matter”. Taking this into account, I found myself admiring the overall form generated by Aranda Larsch, and It was not just the formations of patterns on the tetrahedrons in the project that amuses me. The project itself as stated, the overall form is not there, it is to never end, but to keep growing after one’s death, as cosmology theory is. The project at first sight seems to be some kind of shapes oritented with a best fit curves. However, with tessalation process, I found that just effect could also be generated. Hence, in my script, with a geometry in a bounding box, I culled out the points that are outside of the geometry to bring the overall form of the tessalation working closely to the “controlled” boundary geometry. Afterthis, a set of choosen parts will either be enlarge, or scale down or being “cut” using the first set of script, or all of the above. This is to generate the cosmology effect of growing and dying of the “stars”. These geometries are then input into the curve creating script to create the patterns on the geometry.
B.4 TECHNIQUE DEVELOPMENT
Bitruncated Cubic
CantitruncatedCubic
CubotahedronOctahedron
RegularOctahedron
RhombicDodecahedronA
TruncatedAlternateCubic
Bitruncated Cubic
CantitruncatedCubic
CubotahedronOctahedron
RegularOctahedron
RhombicDodecahedronA
TruncatedAlternateCubic
Simple Jitter
Python Randomised
Comments The scale in which the plugin Geometry Gym provided is quite large, hence creating patterns were extremely slow. However, it is from this that stresses the importance of understanding scale of the final project in my mind. Trying with different “species� I found myself to be liking TruncatedAlternateCubic a lot compare to others, reason being is that the geometry seems to have more connections to each other.
B.6 Proposal The site choosen is along the way from Studley Park to Dwight Falls. I found a spot in which bends a lot, which created a wide angle view towards the other side of the river. Although surroundings are mainly rocks, the quietness of the space, delivers a strong sense of emotions which I found to be an oppurtunity to work with. Not only that, I’ve also found that there were remenants of a deck which could have just been a spot for boats to stop by, or could be some sort of gather point on the river, however they were wrecked, so this could be an oppurtunity for me to fine tune the ruins and develop something more interesting to the site. Furthermore, it was noted that at the chosen site, a larger number of old people were registered compared to the young ones, which are mainly joggers and dog walkers. However, there are few families that choose this spot to have their picnic. During the walk, especially near Dwights Fall and near Ceres Park, I found that it seems that nature and human industrial does not seems to work so well together. Reasons being is that human structure, does not accomodate the vegetations and fauna in the area, which created a huge gap to unity between the two aspects. Hence the aim of the pavilion I am building is to try to address that problem, and help the site somewhat to work better with the surrounding environments.
Users
Animals
Existing Site