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Animal Engineering: The Ultimate Smart Structure
The termites of
sub-Saharan Africa have something very important to teach us
about the way we build our homes. The remarkable, seemingly
random piles of mud which they build, are renowned for their
ability to regulate and control the internal environments of
their homes. Incredibly, the
mound structures can maintain the same levels of 'comfort'
as our own, to the extent that the system can respond to
changes outside as effectively as those found within our own
bodies. They are able to do this by forming complex ducts
and channels which not only look like our own vessels and
respiratory channels, but function as effectively as well.
No other organism on the earth is known to engineer the
environment to this level.
With literally
millions of inhabitants in a single mound, located in a nest
buried approximately a metre beneath the ground, they face a
formidable challenge to ventilate the colony and maintain
both temperature and moisture constants whilst protecting
the colony from the harsh environment outside in which they
would perish. These termites are like aliens on our own
planet. So specialised have they become in their method of
survival, that they must construct their habitats with the
same due diligence as we would in placing a human colony on
another planet.
Where we struggle to
derive enough energy to thrive with our current
technologies, termites have evolved construction methods
which only utilise renewable energy sources. To us, it
is currently inconceivable that renewable energy resources
alone can supply enough energy for our race to thrive in the
face of the growing decline of our non-renewable energy
supplies. So how successful is their race at thriving?
There is estimated to be some 500 kilograms of termites for
every human alive, which shows they must be doing something
right.
Bionic Buildings : Bringing Our Homes To Life
Project TERMES (Termite
Emulation of
Regulatory
Mound
Environments by
Simulation) is a
truly adventurous and far reaching project. Using new,
cutting-edge technologies we are copying the complex
internal structure of these mounds, so that we can build our
own homes in the same way.
This project takes
the approach that, ‘if they can do it, so can we’.
What little we do know, and the enormous amount we are
discovering, has some serious implications on construction
in the near future.
These mounds have
no obvious ventilation system and are different from the
tall open chimney type mounds which are often cited as
architectural inspiration for passive ventilated structures,
and yet, they somehow exhibit the same levels of homeostatic
regulation which you expect to find in living organisms.
So how do they do
it? Do they open all the windows when it gets stuffy?
Is the external and internal shape of the mound somehow
controlling and regulating nest environment? Are the
materials, the termites build with, in some way ‘smart’ to
achieve this level of control? Is the shape simply the
outcome of many interrelated physiological processes taking
place within? Well this project aims to find out.
With new computer
technologies and processes, we have, for the first time, the
opportunity to reveal, simulate and then embed this
knowledge into our own homes, which are the greatest
consumers of energy and generators of waste.
No-one has ever
seen this structure and we are revealing it to the world for
the first time. What we learn from these mounds will enable
us to change the very fabric of construction as we know it,
so not only can we build our own buildings on any terrain,
against any backdrop, anywhere on the Earth, the Moon and
Mars, maybe we can make a difference to climate change from
the comfort of our own arm chairs.
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