Abstract
The search for general common principles that unify disciplines is a longstanding challenge for interdisciplinary research. Architecture has always been an interdisciplinary pursuit, combining engineering, art and culture. The rise of biomimetic architecture adds to the interdisciplinary span. We discuss the similarities and differences among human and animal societies in how architecture influences their collective behaviour. We argue that the emergence of a fully biomimetic architecture involves breaking down what we call ‘pernicious dualities’ that have permeated our discourse for decades, artificial divisions between species, between organism and environment, between genotype and phenotype, and in the case of architecture, the supposed duality between the built environment and its builders. We suggest that niche construction theory may serve as a starting point for unifying our thinking across disciplines, taxa and spatial scales.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour’.
Highlights
When Rene Descartes formulated ‘mind –body’ dualism, his aim was to distinguish humanity from the animal world, and at the same time to salvage a place for God in a material world
For the Cartesian, the duality is between mind and body—between the transcendent mind and the clockwork machinery of living things. This distinction, and the form of logical argument upon which it was based, has been taken up enthusiastically by a large strain of modern biological thought, which has sought to impose a host of its own dualities, among them the duality between organism versus environment, between phenotype versus genotype, categorical species from categorical species [1]
As we do with the Cartesian duality between mind and body, we might ask whether the dualities that permeate modern biological thought help or hinder our understanding
Summary
When Rene Descartes formulated ‘mind –body’ dualism, his aim was to distinguish humanity from the animal world, and at the same time to salvage a place for God in a material world. It is worth remembering that modern Darwinism is permeated with its own pernicious dualities: of genotype versus phenotype, of organism versus environment, to name two, which has left the landscape of modern Darwinism strewn with its own paradoxes [3] These ramify into biomimetic architecture’s own dualities: that human architecture is somehow radically distinct from other ‘architectures’ in nature, and that there is a fundamental distinction between the built environment and the agents that build it. Along with social insects (bees, ants, some wasps and termites) provide some of the most dramatic examples of this physiological conspiracy, and it has obvious relevance for biomimetic architecture: what if our constructions mimicked the dynamic interaction of organism, environment and built environment that occurs routinely in nature?. This last, we propose, may help account for human social and cultural evolution proceeding at a rate far faster than genetic evolution, while accounting for social forms outlasting, on occasion, the lifespan of the individuals from which they are composed
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