Biomimicry Techniques Application in Buildings

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Ahmed Atef Faggal - Associated Professor of Environmental Control, Architectural Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Egypt. An arising issue that concerns all fields of research is climate change and its impact on the environment. A major reason for this phenomenon is human intervention. it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone. The fields of engineering and architecture are major contributors to this phenomenon. In the process of creating and designing architectural and urban prodigies inspired by machines and utilizing up to date technologies the environment which we live in was unintentionally harmed and contributed to climate change which in turn caused environmental degradation. Environmental degradation It is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife. It is defined as any change or disturbance to the environment perceived to be deleterious or undesirable. Resources simply become depleted due to overuse Hence architects and engineers started to cooperate with other fields to create living spaces with minimal impacts on the environments and terms such as green, sustainable, zero energy amongst others started emerging. The need to save the environment became the priority and the concept that any building is designed with. Returning to nature, creating living buildings that adapt like any living organism to the surrounding environment without affecting the natural equilibrium became an aspiration in which all knowledge and technologies utilized and merged into the design process to achieve. One of the concepts that rely on this perception is Biomimicry. What is Biomimicry? It is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. Like any discipline Biomimicry has a set of principles, potentials and constraints. Biomimicry is not only concerned with energy conservation but also form, structural systems ...etc. and it is a discipline that is not exclusive to engineers and architects but an array of various fields like medicine, transportation, business …etc. It is due to current environmental crisis and the need to diminish the emission of greenhouse gases that considering more sustainable solutions became a must and the existence of advanced technologies facilitates such endeavour. Applying biomimetic techniques to conserve energy becomes a reasonable approach because what better way than to imitate or mimic nature ways in solving such crisis. In engineering and architecture there are some examples of materials, systems, and buildings that conserve energy via biomimetic techniques. Materials and Systems inspired by nature Self-healing cement, ceramic, plastics are all inspired from the ability of cells to regenerate and form scabs when they are wounded. Self-healing means no human intervention and thus this will lessen from the pollutants during manufacturing process, and also minimize waste due to the regenerative quality it will not be replaced by new ones. Also there are Exterior coatings and paints that are inspired by the hydrophobic surface of lotus leaf. This makes them self-cleaning and minimize the use of toxins found in detergents when cleaning and minimize water waste whilst cleaning these surfaces. Another material is Wood adhesive inspired from mussels as mentioned in figure4. Chemists added a form of amino acid that is usually found in mussels that make them stick onto rocks to soy flour and thus creating high-strength adhesive. The adhesive makes it possible to stop using other adhesives that have cancer-causing chemicals. Biomimicry is still an unfulfilled approach towards design due to its recentness. The ability to fully mimic a living organism or ecosystem might still not be attainable due to the highly articulate designs of nature that even though with the technologies provided nowadays could not assist in imitating them entirely. However by collaborating with biologists an architect can come up with passive techniques that are not mechanically aided