Inspired by Nature: Animals: The Building/Biology Connection (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780393732719)

Nature has always furnished stimulating ideas for the design of architecture, and the use of animal forms in contemporary architecture--whether to endow a project with symbolism, find a functional solution, or simply for aesthetic reasons--has become a commonplace practice. Inspired by Nature: Animals focuses on specific analogies, comparing and contrasting techniques and materials used in animal constructions with examples of human architecture. It gathers together the work of two dozen architects who have drawn on such structures as tortoise and snail shells, spiders' webs and birds' nests, beehives and beaver lodges.

Among the built examples from around the world are inventive projects such as Elephant Skin House (PPAG Architects, Austria), Kiss the Frog! (mmw architects, Norway), Moore Apiary (Marlon Blackwell, Cashiers, North Carolina), Concrete Pod (Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio, Nagoya, Japan), and more, beautifully illustrated in colorful photographs supplemented by plans. The visual analogies underline how architects can find elegant solutions and create new, sustainable, and efficient architectonic forms by the close and understanding observation of nature.


Author: Alejandro Bahamón,Patricia Pérez
ISBN-10: 0393732711
ISBN-13: 9780393732719
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 04/06/2009
Pages: 192
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.47lbs
Size: 9.40h x 7.92w x 0.53d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 05/01/2009 pg. 231