Raphael Thys
Concept depicting new possibilities for the development of sustainable construction technologies and ... [+]getty
It’s well established that urban environments are going to be home to the majority of the world’s population in the coming decades. While extreme weather is causing floods, droughts and wildfires, it’s also going to have significant effects on urban living. The increasing temperatures the media is discussing, from heat waves across India, the US, Spain and Germany, Doha at 49°C or Jacobabad at 51°C, mean that we must find new ways to protect city dwellers from the worst impacts of a changing environment.
According to Lauren Sorkin, executive director of the Resilient Cities Network, cities have the potential to address climate change but they need a rethink in terms of how they keep people safe and build in equity and resilience. Sorkin argues we also need to agree on a common set of risks – and be honest about the level of risk we face. It’s important to remember that cities themselves are major infrastructure investors and consumers and are, to an extent, able to set their own agendas about how they address the challenges we face. Sorkin says, “together they can create waves of change.”
Such changes obviously come with a cost – estimates today are that it will take roughly 2-3% of global GDP to effectively transition to a low carbon future. A recent report from C40 Cities warns that over 7 million people in the world’s largest cities face flood related costs of $64 billion a year. Healthcare and energy systems are at risk of flooding, while in C40 cities overall could lose over 16 billion m3 of surface water a year due to drought – equivalent to the Sydney Harbour drying out 30 times. The cost of replacing that water could be a combined $111 billion a year.
The C40 Cities recommendations for action are not surprising, spanning as they do a range from large-scale investment to local behavioural change. Companies need to pay attention to this, as they both operate within cities and are reliant on their inhabitants. In many ways a city is an ecosystem, and all economic operation exists within and is dependent on ecosystems. That being the case, perhaps the way best to look at how to address the resilience of cities is to change the way in which we think about cities, and about buildings in particular.
The built environment already responsible for up to 40% of global emissions (with cities responsible for 70% of such emissions), through heating and cooling, lighting, transportation and embodied carbon. Addressing this means thinking about cities, and how we live in them, in different ways. According to Jamie Miller, director of biomimicry at B+H Architects, what we need to do is centre biomimicry at the heart of new build, master planning and regeneration.
Formerly of his own consulting firm Biomimicry Frontiers, Miller has been focusing on the imitation of natural processes to address building and environmental challenges since 2007 and sees his work with B+H Architects as an obvious next step in bringing biomimicry to a wider audience. He believes that by bringing the philosophy of biomimicry into the way we think about the future is our best hope of addressing some of the ‘wicked problems’ (problems that are hard to define, interdependent, sometimes contradictory and always changing) we face, from climate change, poverty, sustainability, inequality, hunger and more.
This is because biomimicry is an important lens through which we can reconnect the natural and the built or designed – creatively extracting nature’s knowledge and finding new solutions to problems. What biomimicry does is rely on lessons from billions of years of natural evolution, building on ideas that have already been proven to work from forest canopies, mangrove swamps and even spider-silk. Bees, for example, gave us the idea of swarm thinking that underlies a lot of artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) approaches.
In building terms, Miller refers to a residential building in India where the firm designed a building that was hyperlocalised. In India, a critical element is ensuring the building is cooled. Thinking about elements of nature, elephant skin came to mind, because it is full of tiny cracks where minute water droplets stick, to allow ongoing evaporation and cooling. This led to the design and integration of a rock wall, providing passive cooling for the building. Termite mounds, with their tunnels moving air around, provide a model for pulling in cooler air and pushing out hotter.
It's not simply structure and materials that matter, its processes too. B+H designed a permaculture strategy for the garden which underpinned overall support for the ecosystem. Planters were connected to support the natural symbiotic relationship of plants - reducing water and maintenance, the need for pesticides, and supporting greater resilience of the system. Measurements of air pollution, carbon sequestration even temperature regulation improved after the project was complete.
In terms of the built environment, biomimicry is about rethinking how we approach planning, building and retrofit. It’s about exploring new processes, new approaches and new materials, as well as thinking through what we want our buildings and cities to do, in terms of function, safety and support of their inhabitants. Biomimicry is already widely applied in building practice, from dynamic facades that open and close like skin pores to ‘blinking’ glass that shades as the sun moves. In Vietnam a 101-storey tower was built with foundations modelled on mangrove roots to ensure stability in a dynamic delta environment. Ornilux windows, for example, emulate spider silk to reduce bird collisions while Carbon Cure makes cement that eats CO2, bricks can be built from mycelium and innovations continue apace.
These technologies are available and scalable and while locally attuned ideas, such as the building in India, may be less scalable because they’re tailored to a specific space, the thinking behind it is not – it’s that such thinking needs to be explored. The key term to consider is resilience. Forests last for thousands of years more than cities – so what can we learn from how a forest works to improve the way a city works. Miller urges the use of a biomimetic lens saying, “In a forest, we see passive design, circular economies, additive manufacturing, green chemistry, carbon solutions, and a model for how to truly live over the long haul on this planet. “
One of the great challenges, as with climate change, is the time frame. There is often a disconnect between the life of a building and the interest of an asset owner (unless it’s a legacy building) but, as Miller points out, “Biomimicry is a resilience strategy, if you want long term building success that’s where you’ll find it.” He adds, “There is nothing new about biomimicry, that’s the beauty of it. It’s just about thinking differently and outside the dominant paradigms that drive traditional development.”
At a time when the media is full of climate doom, and governments are failing to act on implementing the laws and frameworks needed for change, what’s exciting about biomimicry is that it is a way of looking at the world that is both hopeful and practical, as well as something anyone can do. As Janine Benyus, founder of the world’s first bio-inspired consultancy, once said, “We’re not necessarily a bad species, just a very young one.” Nature is all about balance and Miller says a lot of work with biomimicry is about gradient, about developing small scale adaptations and iterations that can have dramatic impact if scaled and replicated. He says, “We already have mentors and models to help us. We’re here and we must figure out how to live here in the long run.”