Michael Pawlyn

Architect, Consultant, Designer

Architect Michael Pawlyn set up Exploration in 2007 to focus on high performance buildings and innovation based on biomimicry. From 1997 to 2007 he worked with Grimshaw and was part of the core team that designed the Eden Project. He has lectured widely on the subject of sustainable design and has taught on intensive courses in Biomimicry at Schumacher College with some of the world’s authorities on the subject. He is currently working on ‘The Sahara Forest Project’ and other schemes that explore new approaches to environmental challenges. An updated and expanded second edition of his book 'Biomimicry in Architecture' was published in October 2016.

Biomimicry and radical solutions to global challenges

It would be bordering on the evangelical to suggest that nature has the answer to everything. Nature does not make things out of metals, nor does it have high speed rotating axles or heat engines. But living organisms, because of the ruthless refinement of evolution, are remarkable models from which we can learn to achieve radical increases in resource efficiency: if we multiply the implications of materials made with a factor one hundred energy saving by the efficiencies of structures that are ten times higher than conventional approaches then we glimpse what could be attained. And, if we do it correctly, all of those materials can be cycled permanently in endless transformations. The very notion of waste can be progressively designed out. With new developments in additive manufacturing using biological raw materials and from learning how to replicate bio- and geo-mineralisation there is real potential to develop large-scale drawdown technologies that reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Then the construction industry would move comprehensively beyond mitigation to a positive and regenerative paradigm. Much of this may be beyond our current capabilities but we know that this is not the realm of fantasy because the natural world is living proof of the possibility.

Biomimicry innovation, Circular economy solutions, High performance buildings, Resource-efficient architecture, Zero waste industrial solutions