BIOMIMETIC TECHNOLOGIES

How can we learn from nature? One of the most obvious ways is to look at natural systems and design technologies based on them. These are called biomimetic technologies. A single example can illustrate some of the issues that arise.

Termites maintain nearly constant internal temperatures in their mounds through a system of channels. They don’t need fans that require power. For a time, it was believed that they used a simple convective cooling system, where hot air rises through the central chimney, drawing in cool air at the base. In 1996, a large office and retail building was built based on this idea: the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, designed by the architect Mick Pearce [TS]. It has chimneys and ventilation channels that draw cool night air through the building’s thermal mass. It uses roughly 90% less energy for climate control than a conventional building of comparable size! That translates directly into far lower carbon emissions from heating and cooling.

This success inspired emulation. Pearce himself used similar termite-chimney-inspired designs in a Melbourne office building [HB]. More recently the Startup Lions Campus in Kenya, designed by Kéré Architecture on the banks of Lake Turkana, features three tall terracotta-colored ventilation towers modeled after local termite mounds.

(1/n)

[TS] Turner, J.S. & Soar, R.C. (2008). Beyond biomimicry: What termites can tell us about realizing the living building, Proc. I3CON, p. 18.

[HB] Hes, D. & Bayudi, R. (2005). Council House 2 (CH2), Melbourne CBD: a green building showcase in the making. Proceedings of Conference on Sustainable Building South East Asia, pp. 231-241.

RE: https://mastodon.online/@xankarn/116448149001409888

This turned into a 🧵 on the meaning of resistance and staving off discouragement in the face of ongoing politcal corruption and goon-ery.