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Biomimicry When Applied to Buildings

Submitted by energymodel on Thu, 04/20/2023 - 11:50

I was surfing the US DOE the other day and learned that one of the areas of research they're working on tackles the problem of all the energy used to condition all this space when the human body occupies only a small fraction of said space. This is where biomimicry comes into the picture. Biomimicry is an emerging discipline which studies nature's forms, processes and ecosystems to find clues to how our species should live. This idea is premised on the fact that homo sapiens has only been on earth 200,000 years, compared to other species some of whom have been around for hundreds of millions of years. This on a planet where life began 3.8 billions years ago.

The biomimetic approach starts with the question: what would nature do (or not do) in this situation? So take a building's interior space. Does nature condition any spaces which animals inhabit? Passively, yes. What about species similar to us? Well, other mammals have fur or hair as an insulator, which we homo sapiens do not have. So what can we do? For staying warm, mimic other mammals who have fur by layering clothing. As for cooling, we should be in smaller spaces that are naturally (passively) insulated and conditioned. Think thermal mass and natural ventilation. Now where does DOE's research come in? They're researching robotic air heating/cooling units that follow people around. But how much energy is that going to save as the heat is mixing with all the air circulating in the space? Now let's beg the question: what would nature do (or not do) in this situation? I have an idea but I'm not going to end here and leave it to you dear reader to ponder the question.