Bio-inspired Adaptive Building Skins - Biotechnologies and Biomimetics for Civil Engineering - page 120

Fig. 5.3 Burke Brise Soleil
at the Milwaukee Art
Museum. Architect:
Calatrava (Source http://
www.flickr.com/photos/
crazyegg95/ under CC
BY-ND 2.0 license)
5.3.2 Function
5.3.2.1 Function: Material
Building materials and natural systems have a long common history. In the first
human settlements, building envelopes were made from locally available materials
such as animal skins, timber or bamboo. This connection was basically lost with
the advent of modern constructions made from concrete, steel and glass, but is now
subject of a revival with the rediscovery of the sustainable virtues of bioclimatic or
ancient vernacular architecture (Foruzanmehr and Vellinga 2011 ; Zhai and Pre-
vitali 2010 ), such as wind-catchers for natural ventilation in hot and arid climates
(Montazeri and Azizian 2008 ), courtyard architecture (Taleghani et al. 2014 )or
the potential for building underground (Van Dronkelaar et al. 2014 ). Also in many
augmented or composite construction materials, the connection between nature
and building materials is re-established. A typical example of a nature-inspired
way of building are the green walls or roofs, which directly transform the use of
greenery into a functional building material (Ottelé 2014 ). Vegetation as a sea-
sonally adaptive solar shading strategy furthermore shows good potential for
energy conservation as well as physiological and psychological performance
benefits (Ip et al. 2010 ; Magnone and van der Linden 2014 ). Constructions enri-
ched with biofibers and biocomposites such as hemp, flax or mycelium (Pacheco-
Torgal 2014 ; Mayoral 2011 ) are other examples of construction materials with a
direct link to nature. A pioneering new development is currently exploring the
possibility of making building materials in a bottom-up way, using enzyme pro-
ducing bacteria (Ednie-Brown 2013 ). In this biomanufacturing approach, the
energy-intensive processes of making materials such as bricks or concrete are
replaced by an environmentally friendly growing process. The developers argue
that the only elements needed to produce the construction material, named