International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
Bionic Architecture Course For Architecture Students
Naglaa Ali Megahed
Architecture and Urban Planning Department, Faculty of Engineering,
Port Said University, Port Said, Egypt
E-mail address: Naglaaali257@hotmail.com
Abstract
There is a growing list of academic institutions that are integrating bionic subjects into their educational
programs. Bionics is an applied science that studies fundamental principles of biological systems to be used for
solving environmental issues or inspiring new design processes. The combination of bionics and architecture is
just like the combination of bionics and other disciplines, which already has made a remarkable development in
different research areas. Consequently, architecture students are inspired by living organisms and their adaptive
interactions with nature. The main purpose of this work is to propose a theoretical framework for bionic
architecture course in architectural programs which provides the appropriate knowledge to analyze different
bionic structures. This derives from the importance of bionics understanding for architecture students to open
new approaches for creativity. The analysis and conclusions shed light on bionics is not only as a bio-inspired
architectural style that can emphasize ways of thinking and designing, but also is as a process of more unique
and sustainable design process.
Keywords: Architecture students; Bionic approaches; Bionic architecture; Bionic classification; Design process;
Sustainable thinking
Introduction
Bionics is an applied science that studies fundamental doctrines of nature, structural, technical and forming in
order to be used in solving the problems that human faces. In this context, bionics is an interdisciplinary field on
the way to establish itself a science which incorporates all areas of biological science and technology. This
applied science will continue to grow in the future with continuous innovative models which also will shape the
architecture of the twenty-first century. Bionic architecture belongs to all buildings and structures which have
been built with the help of enormous nature's role models (Gruber et al., 2011; Huang, et al., 2011). Architecture
students need to be aware of bionics and its innovative applications in architecture. The proposed course aims to
provide the architecture students with the basic knowledge and skills of how to clarify the interactive relation
between architecture and nature through the philosophy of bionic thinking. In addition, give the students the
ability to analyze a range of bionic structures, differentiate between different bionic approaches and illustrate
how to create new bionic architecture which sustains nature in a unique bio-design process.
Bionic Architecture Course
Throughout the context of the proposed course, a set of relevant bionic disciplines is presented and explained
since they are important for the understanding of bionic architecture. The development of bionic architecture can
be divided into direct and indirect approaches which shape the current philosophy of bionic architecture. In
addition, the course illustrates the classification of bionic architecture according to the percentage of mimicking
or imitating nature and its living organisms. Within the course the students are encouraged to present and
analyze various bionic projects and models.
!
Direct and Indirect Approaches
Nature is very smart in optimizing the shape, material and form so the comprehensive understanding of how
nature handles such tasks is a key issue to many researchers nowadays. Furthermore, there is a major shift in
architectural thinking towards nature and the use of applications through natural rules. In the beginning of the
course, the students learn to differentiate between direct and indirect bionic approaches which are used in old
and recent architectural history.
Direct approach
This is also known as the formal approach, where is no deep attention to the fundamentals of structure, behavior
and process. It depends only on the surface imitation of natural models after some changes accordance in their
structure to match new functions. The remarkable architecture in this approach is including in Antonio Gaudi’s
works.
976