Biomimicry, An Approach Toward Sustainability of High-Rise Buildings

Buildings are the main destination for the nation's power supplies. High-rise buildings due to their large scale require much more materials for their construction compared to low rises. In addition, they use more energy and emit greenhouse gases; as a result, they have major environmental impacts. Therefore, high rises seem to be non-sustainable. With increasing popularity of high rises, achieving a high level of sustainability has become the leading subject of the architectural designs. Hence, the efforts for combining technology and biology are to a great extent these days. Biomimicry is a concept that talks about the ideas inspired by nature, and it has been offered as an optimal solution for the conflicts between nature and human activities. As it is said, nature is an excellent and the final response to the problem of sustainability. Therefore, architects have employed biomimicry approach in their designs to minimize buildings negative impacts on the environment and reach overall architectural sustainability. This paper studies different approaches and levels of biomimicry and discusses their application in high-rise buildings. It is shown that employing different principles of biomimicry may result in diverse outcomes in terms of tall buildings' sustainability.