by: Daniel Fox
Event: Biomimicry for a Sustainable Built Environment
Location: Cooper Union’s Wollman Auditorium, 06.26.07
Speakers: Dayna Baumeister, PhD — Co-Founder, Biomimicry Guild
Organizers: AIANY Committee on the Environment (COTE), AIA COTE and its Biomimicry Guild
Sponsors: FXFOWLE Architects; InterfaceFLOR
Proponents of biomimicry argue that 3.8 billion years of natural evolution has yielded strategies often more efficient and less wasteful that those developed by humans, who have been around only a fraction of that time. By looking at natural forms, processes, and ecosystems, biomimcry can influence design, as been attested to by many practicing architects including Cook + Fox Architects for the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the Pearl River Tower under construction in China.
One source of biomimicry-based design is in the industrial design field. A fan developed by PAX Scientific is based on the Fibonacci sequence. With noise reduction, an increase of energy use for the same output, and a reduction in manufacturing costs because less material is wasted, the “PaxFan” blades can be used in kitchen range hoods, refrigerator evaporators, and HVAC fans.
The Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car is a new concept car that mimics the shape of a boxfish. Even though the car has an angular, cube-like shape, it is more aerodynamic than many other cars and achieves 78-miles-per-gallon.
The evening lecture given by Biomimicry Guild co-founder Dayna Baumeister, Ph.D., kicked off a two-day workshop held at the Center for Architecture and at the Interface Showroom, a condensed professional workshop given by the Biomimicry Guild to designers.
Aaron Slodounik, LEED AP, is a freelance art and architecture writer based in New York.