Biomimicry

Essay: The Future of Building, Biomimicry and Architecture
Posted on March 1, 2013 by Scott Nelson • 0 Comments
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” Gary Snyder

There is a very important and necessary shift happening in the world of architecture and design. We are awakening to the reality that we are part of the larger ecosystem of the earth and that our creations can both injure and heal the bodies and landscapes that we call home.

We have been so enthralled with the powers of human ingenuity that we’ve made things just because we can, like adolescents testing every possibility, and just as a child grows to become a member of a greater family, the human community is growing towards a state of wisdom which considers not just what it can make but why.

Nowhere is this shift more important than in our architecture. The age old need for shelter is the most basic impetus for the human drive to build, but our structures have become so much more than shelter as humanity has evolved. Our buildings express volumes about our culture, our selves, our beliefs and what we value, individually and collectively. They have become statements of status and taste, repositories of wealth and symbols of security. This accumulation of meaning has come to obscure the simple fact that buildings exist to shelter and nurture human beings and human beings live in physical bodies that arise from the ground of nature.

In the modern age, with all its technological advances, we have sought domination and escape from the vicissitudes of nature through the development of ever more sophisticated techniques and materials. The primary goal has been protection from the elements that threaten us. The result of this, while positive in some ways (few people in “developed” countries die of exposure anymore), has been to separate us from nature to such a degree that we spend most of our time surrounded by synthetic environments that offer little to “the soft animal of your body” as...