Introduction
Applying techniques and methods learned from botany and appropriated from science I have been developing a generative architecture that relies on biomimetics from both direct experience and from software simulations (L-Systems & Xfrog). I do not propose a new architecture that looks like a tree or a flower but I do think it is time to apply new systems that function in natural-like manners in order to begin growing architecture in new directions.
The Spiral Staircase whose structural steps are base on the vertebra of a fish and whose overall form is base on a nautilus is one early example of visual biomimetics affecting both the aesthetic and structure of a design project. More recently, a digitally generative stacking structure derived from plant simulations resulted in the development of a spiraling, cluster of pods influenced by the Fibonacci placement of yucca flowers growing around a central stalk. This project involved other sustainable practices and became a project for a tall building in Barcelona.
Digital Biomimetics
In the summer of 2006 I spent ten days at Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s laboratory for urbanism in the Arizona deser. Studying his use of a fragile and beautiful mesa site, attempting to understand his artistic, social, civil, and ecological vision, researching his earlier work in the site’s excellent archive, and talking with people working/living at Arcosanti, I came to think that Soleri’s vision could also seed emerging biomimetic practice in digital-botanic or digital-environmental visualization for experimental architecture. After attending one of weekly meetings that Soleri hosts, and, after speaking with him, I more fully came to think that his ideas could be introduced into current digital practice with a kind of genetic-idea compatibility, channeling his wide-ranging concepts into current technological forms, media, and forums.
While I’m not suggesting that a new generation of designers copy Arcosanti’s cement technologies or specific forms, I do suggest that Soleri’s ideas on organization, density, and systems reignite conversation and re-liberate some of his embedded concepts and living ideas (for example, in his desert Arcologies) integral to his work and writings for use today with new materials, bio-architecture development, advanced engineering, visualization software, and construction techniques in order to generate a next-generation, not of disciples, but of innovators grown from the seeds of Soleri’s.
Arizona Tower Project Description
In the time I was at Arcosanti, I explored and hiked the nearby mesas and canyons, documenting plants, lava, and lichen. During those excursions I took a small Motion tablet computer running Xfrog and would stop and generate a kind of field drawing—not of existing conditions—but a new digital growth; simulated architectures base on plant structure suggested by the local conditions, plants, and lichens but totally computationally generated. These Xfrog drawings are, in my thoughts, compatible with Soleri’s philosophy and my use of digital growth.
The project illustrated here, beginning with the red sequence of generative elements, shows these early prototype growths as elements of experimental botanic architecture considered for a site near Soleri’s existing Arcologies. Modeled after a living plant’s roots, the digital roots seen in the illustrations anchor the building and then develop into a branching building frame, astatically but structurally allied to an engineered building frame. At the tip of the roots and the tip of the branches, the structure grows water storage tanks underground, then, at the skyline, leaves are hybridized into solar panels. For building access and circulation a series of seedpods are morphed into a double, spiraling stairway; while a second set of flower pods are morphed into domestic or office space.
In an elemental way, this project becomes an experiment not only in generative forms based on plant attributes, it illustrates one of the potential design paths open for developing bio-related typologies for bio-architecture. Most importantly, unlike most new digital architecture, it is not a digital shell supported by existing building techniques and old construction technologies. The Arizona Tower begins to align its own digital production and formal logic with its inherited botanic form reinterpreted and grown with computational systems for digital production with natural, non-toxic, biomimetic materials.
Dennis Dollens is a designer and writer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Barcelona Spain. He teaches in the Bio-Digital Architectures Program at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya and at ELISAVA: Escola Superior de Disseny, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, (Barcelona). His most recent book is DBA: Digital-Botanic and the design comicbook A Pangolin’s Guide to Biomimetics and Digital Architecture. www.tumbletruss.com
