**8. BioTecture project**

Based on the above described approach, a biomimetics-inspired design (BID) project was assigned to the JUST students. It is mainly concerned with the design of a self-sufficient adaptive house that changes its structures and configurations according to inhabitants' needs. The house is also supposed to respond to climatic changes, and to mutate in form and spatial organization during its lifecycle. Since the project views a building as a living creature that continuously changes in response to internal and external factors, and since it is inspired by living creatures, the project's style is called "Biotecture".

Reflections and feedback about the approach and the project implementation are measured by structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was given to the students who worked on the project after they finished the term in which they were assigned the project (Eilouti, 2010) to guarantee neutral feedback.

The results of the project implementation seem to encourage adopting its associative environmental problem-solving techniques and inter-disciplinary approaches as complementary for conventional functional- or formal-oriented problem-solving approaches as points of departure for design generation. However, the new design approach has some limitations as its participants pointed out. One of these is that it limits expressing the designer's personality in the generated design.

In the organism-based method, a designer studies an organism and its relationships to its biome, and then draws partial solutions from the analysis. In this method, a designer: 1. Identifies an organism the features of which seem inspiring for a design solution

3. Defines a design problem that seems relevant to the features defined in the first step

5. Develops a design solution or proposes potential alternatives from the match between

6. Evaluates the design product using criteria from the original organisms and biomes that

In the application-based method, a designer starts from an application that is inspired by organisms or natural systems and draws parallels between that application and buildings or

1. Finds an application that offers promising solutions to architectural design problems 2. Defines a design problem that seems relevant to the application identified in the first step 3. Extracts detailed information about the application and the solutions embedded in its design including the original organisms/biomes that inspired the application

5. Develops a design solution from the match between the application aspects and the

6. Evaluates the design product using criteria from the application's successful accomplishments and from the original organisms that are used for inspiration or

Based on the above described approach, a biomimetics-inspired design (BID) project was assigned to the JUST students. It is mainly concerned with the design of a self-sufficient adaptive house that changes its structures and configurations according to inhabitants' needs. The house is also supposed to respond to climatic changes, and to mutate in form and spatial organization during its lifecycle. Since the project views a building as a living creature that continuously changes in response to internal and external factors, and since it

Reflections and feedback about the approach and the project implementation are measured by structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was given to the students who worked on the project after they finished the term in which they were assigned the project (Eilouti,

The results of the project implementation seem to encourage adopting its associative environmental problem-solving techniques and inter-disciplinary approaches as complementary for conventional functional- or formal-oriented problem-solving approaches as points of departure for design generation. However, the new design approach has some limitations as its participants pointed out. One of these is that it limits expressing the

design problems that share some aspects with it. In this method, a designer:

4. Extrapolates the extracted information to the design problem

is inspired by living creatures, the project's style is called "Biotecture".

**7.2 Organism-based design method** 

2. Extracts detailed information about the organism

and the information extracted in the second 4. Maps the extracted information to the design problem

the information and building aspects

are used for inspiration or imitation

**7.3 Application-based design method** 

building desired attributes

2010) to guarantee neutral feedback.

designer's personality in the generated design.

imitation

**8. BioTecture project** 

Fig. 4. The biomimetics-inspired design methods

Future extensions of this line of research include the automation of databases that are relevant to biosystems and that may be matched to artificial artifacts through computer-aided software. Such software may help in the external and internal referencing between entities and in the knowledge linkage and networking between databases in different disciplines.
