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Fifth
Year Focus Studio, “Learning from Los Insectos: Biomimicry in Architecture,” Southern Polytechnic State University,
Fall 2012 -Janine Benyus
As architects, we are empowered and obligated to ensure that the built world is not only structurally
sound but also designed in an environmentally apposite manner. This studio researched possibilities of biomimicry
in architecture. By engaging, studying and taking inspiration from the natural world, we strived for new concepts and
solutions for a sustainable built environment. We sought to determine what kinds of environmental geometries, behaviors, and flows will help
us to best solve architectural issues related to structure, skin, water and wind mediation and collection, light filtration
and absorption, topography, vegetation, watershed and the public interest. A series of investigations led us from exploration of nature’s own designs and processes,
translation into architectural concepts, and deployment to building forms which blur architecture with landscape. Further,
through understanding and studying principles of building envelope design, we have explored construction details and built
mock-ups, focusing on designs that optimize, conserve, and reuse natural resources. The studio project is the design of a Community Center along the Atlanta Beltline. Project
requirements also include a Beltline transit station and a public landscape element such as a park, farm or garden.
Learning from the natural world, we have sought architecture which is environmentally and socially
responsible, located on a local, city-wide urban/natural infrastructure, while exploring inventive conceptual, real-life and
sustainable solutions.
Students: Felicia
Blake, Megan
Elliott, Tabitha Hooson, Scott Jones, Hanxiong Liu, Tran
Nguyen, Derek
Parman, Julian Quinn, Trey Rinesmith, Zac Suttles, Ryan Townson, Kyle Wilkerson, Yanqiao Yang, Johnny Youssef |
