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A Biological Approach to City Building

Posted by: Nate Berg

27 August 2009 - 7:00am

Architecture and biomimicry are joining forces. A new city being planned in a flood-prone region of India is using the concept of mimicking nature to build a city that better responds to its environmental conditions.

The city is being built by HOK in partnership with the Biomimicry Guild.

"Recently, the company formed an exclusive alliance with the Biomimicry Guild, a Montana-based consulting organization that pairs consulting biologists with designers, seating architects and ecologists together at the drawing table. When HOK is involved early in a project, an interdisciplinary team of Guild and HOK professionals visits the site to better understand the “genius of place” in order to aid the design team’s architectural approach. Faced with constructing a hypothetical building in a desert setting, for example, HOK designers drew inspiration from the barrel cactus, whose vertical ridges work as a self-shading device—something that would cut down artificial cooling loads in the finished structure."

Full Story: Architecture That Imitates Life
Source: Harvard Magazine, September 1, 2009
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