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About the Unit

Biotecture finds its muse in the natural world, more pertinently from the processes, anatomy, and function of site-specific flora and fauna. Biomimetics; the abstraction of good design from nature, does not slavishly adhere to nature's composite imitation. Employing research by design methodologies, the unit embraces digital design technologies developed and applied in the framework of biologically inspired processes. Put simply, nature is the largest design laboratory that ever existed and ever will. While Biomimetics does not exclude emulating form, we are interested in the processes and systems in which all design resides.

The unit challenges the notions of 'sustainability' and how contemporary ideologies may be translated into living systems with a future, rather than future living systems. Developing broad areas of research that promote holistic rather than exclusive architectural models for sustainable design and filter this enquiry through a range of projects both locally and globally. We merge an astute selection of observed properties with sophisticated artificial technologies and thus inform their subsequent hybrid development. Emphasising ways of thinking and designing that brings architecture into a process of ecological and biological focus on more responsive, healthier buildings; from hi-tech urban skyscraper facades to UNHCR Headquarters in Kibera, Africa, to emergency infrastructure in Haiti, urban remediation of water, food and energy resources to eco-tourism and lifestyle. As such it raises the prospect of closer integration of form and function, promising to yield new means by which architecture may interact with and respond to, the benefit of the environment.

Projects during 2009/10

This year the unit has investigated sites and visited projects in Africa, Switzerland, America and throughout the UK. The global and diverse nature of the unit has been internationally recognised, through competition entries and corporate collaboration. Competition entries include: Evolo: Skyscraper for the 21st century, HB:BX Building Cultural Infrastructure, The Blue Award 09, Make Bethnal Green, International Velux Award 2010, The Nationwide Housing Awards and the Yele Music School Haiti Open Ideas Competition. The unit encourages the exploration of architectural possibilities in everything from the deep ecocentric self build village in Africa, to urban hyper-blue planning, to the extreme machines of the tropics, deserts and polar ice caps