BIOMIMICRY: MICHAEL PAWLYN HERZOG AND DE MEURON’S BIRD’S NEST STADIUM LOOKS
AWESOME, BUT IT’S INCREDIBLY RESOURCE-INTENSIVE AND TAKES NONE OF THE INGENIOUS ASPECTS OF BIRDS’ NESTS
desert revegetation techniques with sea- water-cooled greenhouses which are also inspired by the Namibian fog-basking beetle] also has the potential to work very well as part of a mixed-use leisure resort. Resorts have normal infrastructural demands in terms of energy, water, food and waste, so if we’re going to create sustainable destinations we have to find ways of meeting those needs in the most sustainable way. If we had a Sahara Forest Project near a leisure scheme, we could deliver zero-carbon food and potentially create all the energy and water needed, at the same time as turning a barren environment into a more bio-diverse and micro-climatically cooler environment.
Are you working on any leisure- related projects at the moment? We’ve done a seed proposal for a sustainable scheme in the Amazon. If it goes forward, it will be a boutique hotel. It’s completely off- grid, so we’ll have to propose ways in which it can be self-sufficient in water and energy and completely closed-loop in terms of its waste processes. And as far as possible the buildings will be made of locally available materials.
What role did biomimicry play in the Eden Project? It was used at pretty much every stage of the design process. One of the challenges was that the site was still being quarried and we didn’t have predictable final ground levels. So we conceived of the building as being com- posed of bubbles; we studied their geometry and developed a bubble model that fitted into that 3D terrain. The next stage was thinking about how those spherical surfaces could be structured most efficiently. For that, we looked at examples in biology such as pollen grains, radiolaria and carbon molecules, which demonstrated that the most efficient way of structuring a spherical surface was with pentagons or hexagons. We then wanted to maximise the size of those hexagons, to save steel and to maxim- ise light, which meant finding an alternative to glass. In nature, there are some very efficient forms made out of pressurised mem- branes and that led us to ETFE, which is a high-strength polymer that’s put together in three layers then inflated to give it rigidity. We pushed the material further than ever before, and eventually we were able to produce
inflated ‘pillows’ of up to 75sq m in size. With safety glass you’re limited to 10sq m;
not only were some of these hexagons seven times that size, but they were also 1 per cent of the weight of double-glazing. That deliv- ered a huge advantage in terms of steel use. When designing the dome intersections
posed a challenge, we resolved it by looking at the structure of dragonfly wings.
Why is it important the buildings we spend our leisure time in are well designed? When people are in leisure mode, they’re often very receptive to new ideas, and there’s a real chance if someone sees something inno- vative when they’re on holiday, they will think about how to apply that when they go back to their work environment. I also think it’s really important to find ways
to reconnect with nature and help people to understand just how much we depend on nature for our future quality of life: our materials, medicines and foods. And that’s something that you can often do on a leisure scheme that you wouldn’t be able to do on, say, a dense urban site.
The Sahara Forest Project aims to create revegetation and green jobs through the production of food, water, clean electricity and biomass in deserts 58
CLADGLOBAL.COM CLAD mag 2015 ISSUE 1
IMAGE: COPYRIGHT SAHARA FOREST
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