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→ architecture and biology; biophilic beauty

Our established view of architecture and its history is surprisingly limited. Almost all books and courses on architectural history begin with Egyptian architecture, i.e. roughly 5500 years ago. The lack of interest in the origins of human constructions for inhabitation or cosmological and ritual purposes is truly surprising even considering the fact that material remains of earliest constructions of man would not exist. We know that domestication of fire took place about 700,000 years ago, and the centring, focusing and organizing impact of fire is already an architectural ingredient. In fact, the earliest architectural theorist, the Roman Vitruvius Pollio, acknowledges this fact in De Architectura libri decem (Ten Books on Architecture), which he wrote during the first decade of Pax Augusta, c. 30–20 BC. Most treatises associate the origins of architecture in tectonic construction, in other words, assembled masonry or wood structures or moulded clay and mud constructions. However, there is very little doubt in the assumption that human architecture originates in woven fibre structures. Architectural anthropology, a rather recent field of research, studies the origins of certain ritualistic and spatial patterns in the building behaviour of apes.⁸

Also, the countless vernacular building traditions of the world with their impressive features of adaptation to prevailing local conditions, such as climate and available materials, were not much thought about until Bernard Rudofsky's exhibition Architecture Without Architects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964.⁹ Anthropological studies have revealed the cultural, symbolic, functional and technical refinements of the unselfconscious processes of construction mediated by illiterate and embodied traditions. However, vernacular traditions still remain as a curiosity in architectural studies, although the deepening of research in the sustainability of human settlements and ways of constructions will certainly awake interest in this neglected area of human building culture.

Animal constructions serve the same fundamental purposes as human constructions; they alter the immediate environment for the benefit of the species by increasing the level of order and predictability of the habitat and improving the probability of survival and procreation. As we know, animal constructions are surprisingly varied. Some degree of building behaviour is practised throughout the entire animal kingdom, and skilful building species are scattered throughout the phyla from protozoa to primates. Pockets of special architectural skill can be found among birds, insects and spiders. It is thought-provoking to realize that the constructions of higher animals are among the least ingenious. Apes, for example, only construct a temporary shelter each night – although there seems to be more organization and skill than we have observed so far – as compared with the termite metropolis of millions of inhabitants which may be utilized for centuries.

The interest in animal architecture among architects and architectural scholars has remained totally anecdotal although inspiring documentation on animal constructions has existed since Reverend John George Wood's remarkable treatise Homes Without Hands published in 1865.¹⁰ Karl von Frisch's Animal Architecture of 1974¹¹ was instrumental in re‐awaking my own by then already forgotten childhood fascination in building activities of animals. Michael H Hansell's books and exhibition in Glasgow in 1999 have provided scientific ground on the functioning principles as well as materials and ways of constructing among animals.

The book La Poétique de l'espace (1958) by the French philosopher of science and poetic imagery has been one of the most influential books in the recent theorizing of architecture surprisingly includes a chapter on nests.¹² He quotes the view of Ambroise Paré written in 1840: “The enterprise and skill with which animals make their nests is so efficient that it is not possible to do better, so entirely do they surpass all masons, carpenters and builders; for there is not a man who would be able to make a house better suited to himself and to his children than these little animals build for themselves. This is so true, in fact, that we have a proverb according to which men can do everything except build a bird's nest”.¹³

In relation to the size of their builders many animal constructions exceed the scale of human constructions. Others are constructed with a precision unimaginable in human construction. Artifact‐building animals teach us that the organization of even simple animal life is complex and subtle. Close studies by scanning electron microscope (SEM) reveal mind‐boggling refinements of structures in a scale invisible to the human eye and totally beyond the capabilities of human builders, such as the microscopic structural ingenuities of spider or caddis fly larva constructions.

Animals frequently use the same construction materials and construction methods as vernacular human cultures. Regardless of the usually great differences in scale, similarities on a formal level are often surprising. The clay structures of various swallows and wasps resemble structures of American Indians. In traditional African cultures, woven huts often appear as enlarged bird's nests or even constructions of certain fish species. Beaver's curved dam walls fight the pressure of water in the same way as some of our largest and most advanced dams. A tiny butterfly larva may protect its case with a dome assembled of its own larva hair, echoing the geometry of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic structures which are among the most efficient human constructions in their ratio of enclosed volume to weight ever conceived. A Green Building research project (1990) by Future Systems utilizing a jar‐like external shape and a system of natural ventilation strikingly evokes the internal nest shape and automated air‐conditioning system of Macroterms bellicosus termites, one of the finest constructions in the animal kingdom. I have myself paired such similar images, but they are, of course, bound to remain on the level of the similarity of appearance only. These comparisons can be interesting and stimulating but they cannot teach us anything essential, I believe.

So far, the institution that has made the most serious research on the internal logic of certain animal constructions and their adaptability in human architecture is the Institute of Lightweight Structures at the University of Stuttgart directed by Frei Otto, a notable architect and constructor. These studies have focused on net and pneumatic structures.¹⁴

After mentioning some parallels, I would like to point out certain significant differences in animal and human architecture. Let me begin with the time factor. Animal building processes are the result of immensely long evolutionary processes, whereas our own architectural history is very short in comparison.

Spiders and their web‐building skills have evolved, perhaps, during some 300 million years; The Economist published high‐resolution X‐ray micro‐tomograph images of 312‐ million‐year‐old fossilized arachnids that had eight legs but lacked spinnerets and presumably could not produce silk. When such periods of evolutionary development are compared with the meagre couple of million years of human development since Homo erectus stood up on two legs, we can easily expect animal building skills to exceed ours. There were surely animal architects on earth for tens of millions of years before Homo sapiens put together his first clumsy structures. As I said earlier, our conventional concepts of architecture are restricted to constructions that have taken place over roughly 5000 years of Western high culture.

Another difference arises from the fact that animal architecture has evolved, and continues to do so, under the laws and control of evolution, whereas human architecture has detached itself from this control mechanism and immediate feedback. Whereas animal structures are continuously tested by the reality of survival, we can, and do, develop absurd architectural ideas without the punishment of natural selection and immediate elimination. As Mies van der Rohe said, we tend to ‘invent a new architecture every Monday morning’. This temporary emancipation from the logic of survival allows us to build totally irrational structures in terms of the real necessities of life. In our ‘Society of the Spectacle’, as Guy Debord calls the current era, architecture has often turned into sheer fashion, representation, aestheticization and visual entertainment. The punishment is delayed, of course, because the false models are not eliminated and, consequently, the causal absurdity becomes a concern for the future generations. It is a sad fact that our architecture keeps developing largely without the test of reality.

Sverre Fehn, the great Norwegian architect, once said to me in a private conversation: ‘The bird nest is absolute functionalism, because the bird is not conscious of its death’.¹⁵ This aphoristic and cryptic argument contains a significant truth. Ever since we became conscious of ourselves and our existence in the world, all our actions and constructions, material and mental, are bound to be engaged in the metaphysical enigma of existence itself. We cannot achieve perfect functionality and performance in our dwellings because our houses and other structures have their metaphysical, representational and aesthetic dimensions which necessarily compromise performance in the strict terms of biological survival. These metaphysical concerns and aspirations frequently overrule the requirements of biological and ecological survival.

Animal constructions are structurally efficient, and natural selection has gradually optimized both the forms of structures and the use of materials. The hexagonal cell structure of the bee with its specific angles is the mathematically optimum structure for storing honey. The vertically suspended cell wall of the bee with its two layers of cells, built back‐to‐back with one‐half a cell's shift in the position of the cell walls, to create a continuous three‐dimensional folded structure made of pyramidal units at the boundary surface, is structurally ingenious.

The inner cell of the abalone is twice as tough as human‐made high‐tech ceramics; instead of breaking, the shell deforms under stress like a metal. Mussel adhesive works underwater and sticks to anything, whereas rhino horn repairs itself although it contains no living cells. All these miraculous materials are produced in body temperatures without toxic by‐products and they return back to the cycle of nature.

The extraordinary strength of spider drag line is the most impressive example of the technical miracles of evolutionary processes. None of the man‐made metals or high‐strength fibres of today can come close to the combined strength and energy‐absorbing elasticity of spider drag line. The tensile strength of the line spun by the spider is more than three times that of steel. The elasticity of spider drag line is even more amazing; its extension at break point is 229% as compared with the 8% of steel. The spider silk consists of small crystallites embedded in a rubbery matrix of organic polymer – a composite material developed, perhaps, a couple of hundred million years before our current age of composite materials.

Two thousand years ago, wasps taught the Chinese how to make paper, and the nesting chambers of potter wasps are believed to have served as models of clay jars for the American Indians. The Chinese learned 4600 years ago, how to use the fine silk line spun by the larva of the silk moth, and even today we are using several million kilograms of raw silk annually. In addition to being used as material for fine cloth, silk thread was earlier used to produce fishing rods and strings of musical instruments.

How could we take advantage of the inventions of animals today and what lessons could we learn from a study of animal building behaviour?

The slow evolution of animal artefacts can be compared with the processes of tradition in traditional human societies. Tradition is a force of cohesion that slows down change and ties individual invention securely to patterns of tradition, established through endless time and the test of life. It is this interaction of change and rigorous testing by forces of selection that is lost in human architecture of the industrial era. We believe in individuality, novelty and invention. Human architecture evolves more under forces of cultural and social values than forces of the natural world.

The role of aesthetic choice is important, as it is a guiding principle in human structures. Whether aesthetic choice exists in the animal world is arguable, but it is unarguable that the principle of pleasure guides even the lowest animal behaviour and the transformation of physical pleasure to aesthetic pleasure could well be rather unnoticeable. Regardless of the question of the intentionality of beauty in animal constructions the beauty of superb performance and causality of animal architecture gives pleasure to the human eye and mind.

I will give one example of the human use of animal inventions reported in The Economist.¹⁶ David Kaplan and his colleagues at Tufts University have succeeded to extend the range of properties of spider silk beyond those found in nature. By shuffling the order and number of the hydrophilic, hydrophobic and structure – organizing sections of DNA, and then recruiting bacteria to turn the resulting artificial genes into proteins, the research team has turned out about two dozen novel forms of silk. Some of the tougher and more water‐resistant forms of silk might be employed to impregnate synthetic fibres and lightweight materials called hydrogels to make them stronger and waterproof. The more resilient materials that resulted could then be used to coat and toughen surfaces, strengthen the biologically friendly plastics employed in surgery, and create strong, lightweight components for use in aircraft.

Material sciences which also develop novel materials also for architectural purposes that can be automatically be responsive to prevailing environmental conditions, such as temperature, moisture and light, in the way that live tissue adjusts its functions, are becoming important in the scientific development of human building. Analogies and models from the biological world can be decisive, as in the case of the development of self‐cleaning glass, based on observations of the surface structure of the giant water lily and practically invisible nano‐technology.

It is also becoming increasingly essential that our own constructions are seen in their anthropological, socio‐economic and ecological frameworks, in addition to the traditional aesthetic sphere of the architectural discipline. It is equally important that our aesthetic understanding of architecture is expanded to the biocultural foundations of human behaviour and construction. The field of bio‐psychology is an example of such an extension. As builders, we could learn from studying the gradual and slow development and adaptation of animal constructions over the course of endless time.

Animal constructions open up an important window on the processes of evolution, ecology and adaptation. Ants have the biggest biomass and as a consequence of their skills in adapting to a wide variety of environmental conditions they are the most numerous and widespread of animals, including man. They are among the most highly social of all creatures, and the study of ants has produced insights into the origins of altruistic behaviour.