Extract

Concerns about climate change have driven the development of new environmental theories, policies and initiatives, to reduce negative effects of buildings. This has begun to impact the physical attributes of buildings such as form, fabric and microclimate. Due to this, design professionals are now facing multifaceted challenges as how to balance integrating efficiency initiatives innovatively in order to achieve ecologically sustainable design (ESD). This paper argues that ESD can be enhanced with reference to new environmental theories and design approaches, such as biomimicry, which seeks ecological solutions by emulating nature‟s forms, processes and ecosystems to solve problems sustainably. However, an architectural design process that draws from a deep ecology as a model remains elusive. Can biomimicry potentially offer an approach that help integrate form, process and the ecosystem into an architectural praxis for creating ecologically sustainable buildings?

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