Blog 08 – The Creative Practice of an Individual – srauch

I watched Deb Chachra’s talk on architectural biology and biological architecture. Chachra considers herself an engineer rather than an artist; she’s a professor of engineering at Olin College in Massachusetts. While her primary focus is on making engineering more accessible and inclusive, particularly in the realm of where engineering and gender intersect, she also has an interest in where material science and biology intersect. This talk was about the overlaps between biological structures and architectural engineering. As she explains, with architectural calculation and fabrication techniques evolving as they are, we’re approaching being able to create structures that imitate bone that provide the highest possible strength to weight ratio and can “heal” themselves. 

Bone-like building structures would be a spectacular example of biomimicry, a branch of design I find fascinating. Biomimicry is the practice of imitating nature to create the most efficient design possible – after all, there’s no better designer than 3.7 billion years of evolution. Because biology and engineering don’t traditionally intersect, it takes someone who is interested in both to ideate such solutions, which is why I admire Chachra’s ingenuity to be crossing fields and embracing the emergent potential. Beyond her work itself, I admired her presentation. She gave a very comprehensive but brief history of architecture, and gave an easy-to-understand but not infantilizing explanation of some of the basic biological processes of bones.