Biomimicry in architecture. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change

BIOMIMICRY IN ARCHITECTURE – MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE The main focus of the thesis is illustrating how strategies of biomimicry thinking can be successfully applied in the design process in order to obtain optimized design solutions that actively respond to the environmental issues through adaptation and mitigation to climate change. Biomimicry is defined as mimicking the functional basis of biological forms, processes and systems (ecosystems). The advantages of learning from biological examples are that they benefitted from over 3,8 billion years of research and testing through evolution, so they can provide a strong basis of new solutions for sustainable developments. Biological systems can be seen as embodying technologies that are equivalent to those invented by humans, and in many cases they have solved the same problems with a far greater economy of means. The intention is to study ways of translating adaptations in biology into solutions in architecture. Thus the theoretical background of the projects explores how ideas inspired by the natural systems can have real life applications: from structural efficiency, material manufacturing, rational resource use, zero waste systems, efficient water use, controlled thermal environment, energy supply management and how they are all interconnected. As many of the current approaches to environmentally sustainable architecture are based on mitigation and adaptation to climate change the purpose of biomimetic design is to create buildings that will cease to be static consumers and can become net producers of useful resources. The projects are developed as prototypes to implementing these strategies in different contexts and at different scales by working with the existing built environment and having a minimal intervention policy. The starting point of the projects is based on adaptive reuse of existing abandoned structures and urban residual spaces, the chosen sites are the Ex-Borletti factory and the urban block of Corso XXII Marzo, both indicated in the Ri-Formare Milano project. The proposal for the abandoned Ex-Borletti site is to revitalize the area through restorative design and development of an “industrial ecosystem” based on minimal intervention on existing structures, functional and technological symbiosis with the purpose of extending the building’s lifetime and creating adaptability for current and future context. The development project of the urban block of Corso XXII Marzo is based on adaptive reuse of abandoned structures, design of an urban platform that creates unity in the fragmented urban tissue and integration of systems, local interventions and functional programs in order to achieve self-sustainability and context adaptation. Both projects are depicting a general strategy of use and reuse of the existing built heritage through sensible design solutions for future sustainable development, a transformation of sites of abandonment and underutilization to autonomous productive places, going beyond environmental sustainability to restorative design. LEORDEAN IOANA, NORMANTOVICH SVETLANA