"Architecture Follows Nature" lecture focuses on biomimicry and collaborative research

2014-03-18T20:17:00-04:00

Last Monday evening at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, architect Ilaria Mazzoleni and evolutionary biologist Shauna Price tag-teamed a lecture on their joint-work, Architecture Follows Nature, a collection of architectural proposals inspired by various animal skins. It’s a pleasure when architecture publicly acknowledges and celebrates its inspiration from other disciplines, and by sharing the stage Mazzoleni and Price showed their commitment to this cross-disciplinary research, beyond analogy and into the depths of the design process.

Of the twelve proposals detailed in the book, Mazzoleni and Price presented two -- one inspired by the insulating properties of a polar bear’s fur, the other referencing the iridescence of bird feathers. All of the projects were designed by students in Mazzoleni’s SCI-Arc studio (her practice, im studio, is also invested in biomimicry and sustainable design). Calling these projects “biomimetic” is problematic for Mazzoleni and Price, as ...

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"Architecture Follows Nature" lecture focuses on biomimicry and collaborative research