BIONIC ARCHITECTURE Introduction
Today, there are around 7,7 billion people on the Earth and more than half of them live in densely populated urban areas. Therefore, the ‘built’ environment created by humans replaces the natural environments and the benefits of former times found in nature need to be implemented into artificial urban spaces. We spend the majority of our lifetime in buildings. Architecture and building industry becomes the center of attention and opens up new challenges. Rapid population growth creates high demands for the living space. The current state cannot fulfill the need even in high developed countries, such as Germany, where half of the demand cannot be satisfied. 400 000 new residential units are needed per year. Likewise, the building industry is consuming more than 40% of the global resources and energy and is responsible for 50% of global waste. If we want to satisfy all needs we would have to even intensify the building processes, which would lead to more global waste and an increased consumption of resources and energy. Neither does the stagnation of productivity of the building industry since the 90s help to solve these problems. Can we continue building like this? We can avoid the collapse of our ecological system only if we start rethinking the way we design and build. 11
