Exploration Architecture founder Michael Pawlyn on biomimicry | Design for Life | Dezeen

I am Michael Paulin, I am an architect and I have a particular interest in biomimetics. At explorer Architecture we use

biomimicry

to rethink all types of buildings and develop solutions that use resources much more efficiently. Biomimicry is a nature-inspired innovation that involves looking. how things work in biology and then learn from that to

design

better solutions the bioware pavilion is a proposal for a performance venue the shape is based in part on mathematical shapes and certain seashells and we are planning to grow it in seawater using very thin to tell the material where to grow extracts minerals from seawater and produces a structure similar to reinforced concrete.

It uses an absolute minimum of materials to grow into a complete building. In biology, very complex structures are often found that achieve surprising resource efficiency when arranging material. exactly where it needs to be with computational

design

and 3D printing it is becoming much easier to imitate that level of complexity and efficiency in 2014 we were asked to put on an exhibition at the

architecture

foundation we proposed a whole series of 3D printed tables that would show In The projects used algorithms to determine what would be the most efficient place for all those materials based on the growth patterns of bones and trees, and what we ended up with was something that used one-thousandth of the material of a solid object of that volume, bird skulls. . are a great example of a complex and very efficient structure and we used computational design to produce a version of this.

We created this 3D printed model which is an enlarged version of a bird skull that we eventually want to turn into a pavilion structure. able to model this in a way quite similar to the way it actually grows in biology and what you have are these domes of incredibly thin bone material connected together with these struts and tethers overall, it's incredibly lightweight and structurally very efficient. Often in shells and leaves there are very thin surfaces that become strong structures simply by bending them or having curves, that is something we have done in the abalone house. We are learning the same principles to turn a thin surface into something that is very strong.

We are using tiles made from atmospheric carbon and that is what we need to do more of. We need to find ways to make buildings by taking carbon out of the atmosphere through collaboration between science and art and computational design. This gives us the opportunity to achieve this. much closer to the way things work in biology and that gives us a real opportunity to reintegrate what we do into biological systems and end up with buildings and cities that generate no waste, that use much less material, that do not pollute and that would bring us net benefits. we can get to a point where

architecture

is actually having a positive impact