Heating With Wolves Cooling With Cacti

This book describes the detailed process behind the development of a comprehensive thermo-bio-architectural framework (the ThBA). This framework systematically connects the thermal performance requirements of a building to relevant solutions found in the natural world. This is the first time that architecture has been connected to biology in this manner. The book provides an in-depth understanding of thermoregulatory strategies in animals and plants and links these to equivalent solutions in architectural design. The inclusion of this fundamental knowledge, along with the systematic process of accessing it, should open up new avenues for the generation of energy efficient and sustainable buildings.

This book describes the detailed process behind the development of a comprehensive thermo-bio-architectural framework (the ThBA). This framework systematically connects the thermal performance requirements of a building to relevant solutions found in the natural world. This is the first time that architecture has been connected to biology in this manner. The book provides an in-depth understanding of thermoregulatory strategies in animals and plants and links these to equivalent solutions in architectural design. The inclusion of this fundamental knowledge, along with the systematic process of accessing it, should open up new avenues for the generation of energy efficient and sustainable buildings.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Foreword: Reinventing Nature -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Design Research in Practice: Methodology and Approach with Historical Precedents and Case Studies -- 1 Bioconstructivisms -- Trans-Disciplinary Research Practice: Contemporary Case Studies -- 2 Design Research in Practice: A New Model -- Part II Design Computation Tools for Architecture and Science: New Tools and Forms -- Introduction to Design Computation Tools for Architecture and Science: New Tools and Forms -- 3 Networking: Elasticity and Branching Morphogenesis -- Comments on the Role of the Matrix -- New Architectural Concerns -- 4 Motility: Adaptive Architecture and Personalized Medicine -- Topologically Free Cells -- Avoiding Biomimicry -- Visualizing in Another Dimension -- Positioning Mechanism -- Newness -- 5 Surface Design: The Mammary Gland as a Model of Architectural Connectivity -- On Geometry and Cellular Mechanics -- Biological Data and Intuition -- Case Study: Understanding Behavioral Rule Sets through Cell Motility -- Case Study: Motility and the Observation of Change -- Case Study: Microfabrication: Spatializing Cell Signaling and Sensing Mechanisms -- 6 BioInspired Materials and Design -- Part III Architectural Prototyping: Human-Scale Material Systems and Big Datascapes -- 7 The New Science of Making -- 8 Matter Design Computation: Biosynthesis and New Paradigms of Making -- Project: Branching Morphogenesis, 2008 -- Project: Ground Substance, 2009 -- Workshop: Nonlinear Systems Biology and Design, 2010 -- Part IV Personalized Architecture and Medicine -- 9 eSkin: BioInspired Adaptive Materials -- 10 myThread Pavilion -- Interview: RE(IN)FORM(ULAT)ING Health Care via Medicine + Creativity -- Conclusion -- Notes on Contributors -- Image Credits -- Index

Extensively illustrated with photographs and drawings, Living Architecture highlights the most exciting green roof and living wall projects in Australia and New Zealand within an international context. Cities around the world are becoming denser, with greater built form resulting in more hard surfaces and less green space, leaving little room for vegetation or habitat. One way of creating more natural environments within cities is to incorporate green roofs and walls in new buildings or to retrofit them in existing structures. This practice has long been established in Europe and elsewhere, and now Australia and New Zealand have begun to embrace it. The installation of green roofs and walls has many benefits, including the management of stormwater and improved water quality by retaining and filtering rainwater through the plants’ soil and root uptake zone; reducing the ‘urban heat island effect’ in cities; increasing real estate values around green roofs and reducing energy consumption within the interior space by shading, insulation and reducing noise level from outside; and providing biodiversity opportunities via a vertical link between the roof and the ground. This book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from students and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and ecology, through to members of the community interested in how they can more effectively use the rooftops and walls of their homes or workplaces to increase green open space in the urban environment.

Architecture for the Poor describes Hassan Fathy's plan for building the village of New Gourna, near Luxor, Egypt, without the use of more modern and expensive materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy worked with the villagers to tailor his designs to their needs. He taught them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra (lattice designs in the mudwork) to adorn the buildings.

Contemporary Architecture and the Digital Design Process introduces the reader to new developments in the computer modelling of design form in contemporary architectural practice through a series of detailed case studies. The book illustrates how evolving design practices use and exploit the potential of new computing technologies in a wide range of areas and application. A central thesis of this book is that technology follows design demand, rather than design adjusting to available new technology. Designers are not merely passive recipients of prescribed computing tools and techniques. Instead, they are increasingly able to express their intuitive design ideas through the rational medium of computing. The book features several contemporary building projects, each of which introduces a range of CAD and computing issues based upon the work of creative architectural and engineering design practices. These include the offices of Frank O. Gehry, Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, Anthony Hunt Associates, Peter Hubner, Szyskowitz-Kowalski, and Faulkner Brown. All these examples show what architects need to know and the skills they need to acquire to use advanced CAD technology.

From the bestselling author of Ecohouse, this fully revised edition of Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change provides unique insights into how we can protect our buildings, cities, infra-structures and lifestyles against risks associated with extreme weather and related social, economic and energy events. Three new chapters present evidence of escalating rates of environmental change. The authors explore the growing urgency for mitigation and adaptation responses that deal with the resulting challenges. Theoretical information sits alongside practical design guidelines, so architects, designers and planners can not only see clearly what problems they face, but also find the solutions they need, in order to respond to power and water supply needs. Considers use of materials, structures, site issues and planning in order to provide design solutions. Examines recent climate events in the US and UK and looks at how architecture was successful or not in preventing building damage. Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change is an essential source, not just for architects, engineers and planners facing the challenges of designing our building for a changing climate, but also for everyone involved in their production and use.

The notion of ecology has become central to contemporary design discourse. This reflects contemporary concerns for our planet and a new understanding of the primary entanglement of the human species with the rest of the world. The use of the term ‘ecology’ with design tends to refer to how to integrate ecologies into design and cities and be understood in a biologically-scientific and technical sense. In practice, this scientific-technical knowledge tends to be only loosely employed. The notion of ecology is also often used metaphorically in relation to the social use of space and cities. This book argues that what it calls the ‘biological’ and ‘social’ senses of ecology are both important and require distinctly different types of knowledge and practice. It proposes that science needs to be taken much more seriously in ‘biological ecologies’, and that ‘social ecologies’ can now be understood non-metaphorically as assemblages. Furthermore, this book argues that design practice itself can be understood much more rigorously, productively and relevantly if understood ecologically. The plural term ‘ecologies design’ refers to these three types of ecological design. This book is unique in bringing these three perspectives on ecological design together in one place. It is significant in proposing that a strong sense of ecologies design practice will only follow from the interconnection of these three types of practice. Ecologies Design brings together leading international experts and relevant case studies in the form of edited research essays, case studies and project work. It provides an overarching critique of current ecologically-oriented approaches and offers evidence and exploration of emerging and effective methods, techniques and concepts. It will be of great interest to academics, professionals and students in the built environment disciplines.