A HOUSE THAT TURNS INTO A FOREST
A landowner in India asked us to make his house disappear into a forest. His goal was to bring nature to the dense city of Bengaluru and to eventually have it immerse the structure. He also wanted to make sure that all of the plants on the building connected to mother earth.
Using biomimicry, permaculture, and ecological engineering, Biomimicry Frontiers helped this landowner push the boundaries of habitat design. We partnered with B+H Architects to apply an in-depth, four-stage investigation and design; researching the local conditions and organisms, leveraging the local genius of organisms to inspire bold solutions for how to live on the site, developing practical biomimetic and biophilic design scenarios and finally, applying multiple iterations towards a final holistic self-sustaining design.
One of our primary goals with the project was to go way beyond just doing “less harm” and to move towards creating a building that was a contribution to its place. To test this, we measured the ecological performance (e.g. CO2 sequestration, air purification, O2 production, storm dissipation, noise reduction) of three difference scenarios. Scenario 1 measured the ecological services provided by a hypothetical forest - as if the site was never developed and remained an old-growth forest. Scenario 2 measured the ecological performance of the site as if there was no construction to take place on the site. And Scenario 3 measured our proposed design. We used the performance of the old-growth forest scenario as our baseline - seeing if we could achieve a design that not only fit its environment, but productively contributed to it.
The final design uses locally-produced rammed earth as its primary structure. It copied termite mounds, elephant skin and forest canopies to create passive cooling strategies. We strategically used wind and solar to ensure thermal comfort and reduce electrical lighting. We used permaculture to link all of the planters and plants and support a self-sustaining food system. We designed strategies for the plants to all connect back through to mother earth via their mycelial connections. In our design, we reframed the idea of “waste,” recognizing that in nature there is none, to create a composting system and “living system” wastewater garden. And we ensured that despite the seasonal rains, the house would be fully self-sufficient for water use, water reuse and treatment.
As a part of our final deliverables, we created a full systems report - providing detail design strategies for water, energy, food, materials, and building biology. This allowed us to translate our biomimetic ideas into practical solutions and to created a “biomimicry building standard” report card to measure how “biomimetic” this design really was.
This report card is the first in the world.
Below is a collection of images of our pre-concept analysis - determining the best way to support urban agriculture through permaculture principles, computational fluid modelling for proving the biological strategies and some of the measurements of our ecological performance analysis.
