The author's 2005 Leonardo publication documented a biology-based procedure for generating experimental digital architecture. The text evolved out of Louis Sullivan's morphological lexicon and design process as articulated in A System of Architectural Ornament. The present article is rooted in that paper but here infused with theoretical ideas from Leibniz, Deleuze, Rajchman and Dawkins emphasizing biodesign and bioarchitecture's role as part of nature. In addition, new projects and digitally grown tree/truss experiments illustrate generative, digital-botanic designs integrating biological simulation and/or 3D parametric components inspired by nature.

Issue Section:
Special Section: Lovely Weather: Art and Climate Change
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© 2009 ISAST
2009

Supplementary data

Supplement 1: Growing Buildings

Animated plant images as they are generatively transformed into experimental forms for manipulation as architectural elements. This video illustrates the biomimetic movement of Xfrog digital plant growth as it was used to generate a hypothetical, semi-living building for the Arizona desert. (© 2009 Dennis Dollens: exodesic.com)

- mov file
Supplement 2: Growing Structures

This silent animation of generative plant growth from Xfrog illustrates the growth and curvature development as a structural column or truss derived from intersecting branches and then manipulated into forms suitable for experimental output as STL models as well as for biomimetic design experimentation. (© 2009 Dennis Dollens: exodesic.com)

- wmv file
Supplement 3: Spiral Bridge

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This pedestrian footbridge, designed by Dennis Dollens and Ignasi Pérez Arnal for a village in the French Pyrenees, is a biomimetic structure derived from the flight pattern of a tree seed and the tubular structure of a coral skeleton and translated into digital then environmental design. (© 2009 Dennis Dollens: exodesic.com)

- zip file
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