Date of Submission
Spring 5-7-2021
Degree Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Arash Soleimani
Abstract
Nature has been around and perfected the cycles of growth and development through billions of years. When looking for inspiration or for answers, it is a well cultivated library that has many of the answers for us. Michael Palwyn argues “If biomimicry increasingly shapes the built environment – and I feel it must – then, over the next few decades, we can create cities that are healthy for their occupants and regenerative to their hinterlands, buildings that use a fraction of the resources and are a pleasure to work or live in, and infrastructure that becomes integrated with natural systems” (Pawlyn 8). The use of this natural library can help to cultivate the tools we use to in our own building library, and create a more efficient, sustainable, and forward-thinking environment that does not waste the resources we have but use them to our advantage. Throughout the research of this thesis, studies of the evolutionary successes that biology has to offer will present us with powerful technologies that biological organisms have developed and used for millions of years. So why now for a biomimetic design approach? Today there are many digital technologies that have been developed that allow us to recreate previously unachievable or rigorous design solutions. Developments of these technologies are now included and taught around the world in various forms and fields of study. For many years, the ideas of biomimetic design have been used, but not to the extent that it can be. Previously, visual analysis was the only tool we had to study biomimicry, but again with recent technological developments, we can now study natural mentors on many different levels, and through many different lenses. For this reason, the focus of this thesis will use a technological approach for analysis and recreation. For the focus of this thesis, the vast majority of these computational studies will be done in Grasshopper, a visual scripting tool for Rhino.