biological building fabric - biomembranes for living buildings

Biomembranes is a term I'm borrowing from biology (the structure bounding a cell) to describe the outer skin of future self-sustaining buildings. I have stated elsewhere that I believe that for the built environment - and therefore our societies - to become sustainable, every building and community must deal with its own wastes, generate its own energy and provide nourishment - both physical and spiritual - for the occupiers. Only by the creation of truly in dependant, carbon neutral buildings can we achieve this.

This would be a subtle and far reaching art, not easy to achieve but I believe that the rewards will be many, not to mention necessary. In this respect, the science of biomimicry will play an important part, for example, in developing paint-on polymers that photosynthesize energy, or tensioned fabric five times stronger than steel or kelvar, made with no heat or pollution, just like a spider's thread. Whilst we haven't got those answers yet, let me list some of the benefits we can look to achieve in the near future:

Some of these ideas are becoming well established, such as green (or living) roofs, others are being played with by a few, but as yet, no one is trying to pull all these things together into a cohesive whole system (this will change with the work I am doing through my company BioTecture Ltd). I am experimenting with concepts such as of combining vertical greening with greywater filtration, active cooling systems, air purification and algal biofuel from building wastes.

I have recently been very inspired by the work of the world-renowned architect Ken Yeang (Llewelyn Davies Yeang) based in London and Malaysia. Ken has worked extensively on the concepts of bio-climatic buildings and so his ideas are very close to my heart. Furthermore, one of his main concerns is the organisation of internal space by social structure, rather than by economic return on investment. This very much reminds me of the work of Christopher Alexander (see Pattern Language); despite apparent differences of style, the underlying philosophy is similar, Ken's work placing it into a modern urban context. My company BioTecture is hopefully going to be working with Ken's practice during 2009 on a London Hospital project.

There is a lot to do but the future will need autonomous bio-buildings that take care of themselves without external input, other than sunlight and human organisation. The main challenge is then to retrofit these systems to existing buildings, which will always be the large majority of available building stock.

Meanwhile, take inspiration from the work of Hundertwasser (top right) and Ken Yeang (bottom right). The application of green technology, biological water filtration and the use of every surface to create living, breathing buildings shows that humanity can and will grow up and see beyond the profit line, which so dominates and limits current thinking. Let's hope we do it before it's too late.