Domain
Our domain
is buildings’ homeostasis, being the control of the internal climate (here
defined as ventilation and thermoregulation), by means of internal spatial organisation
that has the occupants’ collective behaviour embedded into it. In the past, internal climatic regulation has been mostly achieved
through top down, mechanical means that are expensive in both material and energy. Some biological
organisms however build impressive and sophisticated structures that obtain
homeostasis through both passive functionality and active remodeling.
Some of
these biomimetic principles have been tested in projects such as the
Eastgate Centre, Harare and the Inland Revenue at Nottingham.
Although these are able to achieve homeostasis in more intelligent ways than
before, they still lack the functional complexity and robustness of their
examples. One of the reasons for this is that their principles are solely based
on the structure of their biological counterparts. They do not take into
account the symbiosis of the architecture with the occupants’ behaviour. Our
research question thus is; how can we, together with a certain exterior envelope, design
an interior organisation, in which the collective behaviour of the inhabitants
is deeply embedded, and that is able to achieve homeostasis?
Methods
For this we
look into, firstly, the architecture of social insects, as well as their
emergent organised behaviour to both build and regulate their structures. A
second field of study is the environmental physics of buildings. We thirdly
look into new studies regarding collective intelligence and super-organisms.
Out of
these studies, we wish to distil a set of simple rules on different levels,
ranging from the level of the smallest ‘building to the overall configuration. These will be used for a series of
digital generative experiments. Our hypothesis is that an agent-based bottom-up
approach will be able to integrate the inhabitants’ influence on the overall
behaviour. The results of these will be assessed using environmental modelling,
focusing on thermoregulation and ventilation. The goal is a feedback loop
between this generative process, and the double-sided information of
environmental modelling and the derived biomimetic principles. Tests will be
run within different boundary conditions, and this within different climatic
conditions. Material exploration will occur in a second stage, based on the
resulting geometrical requirements and looked-for material properties. Evaluation
will be based on inhabitants’ comfort and the robustness of the system
throughout different time scales.
Architectural ambition
The goal is
to set up a method to design a spatial internal organisation that, being deeply
embedded with its inhabitants’ behaviour, is able to regulate the interior
environment. This method should be able to generate results in a few distinct
climatic conditions.
