Lichen grows on the sunny side of the bark of a tree, capitalizing on the warm of the environment. I’m fascinated by the compass termite amitermes meridionalis, native to northern Australia, that builds its nest like a sundial. The long axis of a nest (which look like a tombstone) runs north to south to minimize exposure to intense mid-day rays. The south face of the nest is made of a higher thermal mass material – cob, the north face made with straw bale. Its air conditioning system involves small capillaries as intake and a large central chimney as exhaust, a wonderful example of thermoregulation.
With 3.8 billion years of R&D, nature proliferates in well-adapted solutions — solutions solved in context and the context is EARTH. Learning from nature, taking nature’s advice, is the premise for the book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, authored by Janine Benyus.
The advent of heating and cooling systems coupled with improvements in the building envelope and cheap energy have led to the homogenization of homebuilding. Compare the floor plan of a developer home in Vermont to one in Arizona. Apart from a little white cladding here and stucco there, the blueprints are the same. I grew up in a 1770’s home in Vermont that was four rooms over four (more volume to surface area). The traditional home in Virginia (where I now reside, apparently I can only live in states that start with “V”) is two over two (more surface area to volume). The former built to heat, the latter to breathe. Vermont has 6006 heating degree days (measurement that reflects the demand for energy needed to heat a building), Virginia has half that number, 3304. Vermont has 747 cooling degree days while VA has 1422 (twice as many). Without air conditioning, modern heating, homes from the 18th century were adapted to conserve or reject heat — a strategy seen in nature and one which, when applied to the building industry, has low first costs. This is a strategy the Developer-Builder can easily adopt. It’s called Regionalism.
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