Bártolo, H M G and Bártolo, P J S (2002) Borrowing from nature to support architectural design. In: Greenwood, D (ed.) Proceedings of 18th Annual ARCOM Conference, 2-4 September 2002, Northumbria, UK.
Abstract
During billion of years of natural evolution, the planet’s ecosystems have organized in subtle and complex ways to maximize sustainability. This is a process of past, present and future transformation, as each natural organism is part of a population of similar organisms that evolved to get the survival characteristics required by the environment. Through amazing examples of adaptability transformations performed by these natural organisms, it is clear that this extraordinary fitness process can be transposed to the design field. Architectural design can then be considered an integration of two distinct processes: design by human and design by nature. Design by nature can be defined as an optimized problem-solving process performed by natural organisms to successfully respond to the challenges imposed by environments, to support and optimize the other problem-solving processes that characterizes the design by human activity.This paper focuses on the application of principles borrowed from nature to develop computational tools. These principles to be effective and easily implemented must be embedded into computational systems, constituting important tools to support the problem-solving activity that characterizes the design by human process. They should also induce into the computer the ability to identify sustainable design strategies. Further, a proper chain of computer-tools and procedures are proposed to optimize the understanding and collaboration of design participants.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | design by nature; design by human; architectural design; computational tools |
| Index terms: | integration, architectural design, strategy, population, sustainable design, human activity, transformation, adaptability, survival, evolution, collaboration |
| Subjects: | sociology, user focus, management, design practice, demography, environmental science, organizational analysis, business, design process |
| Topics: | Design Practice, Research Practice, Sustainability, Organizational Design, Business Strategy, Urban Studies |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here