Inseminations. Juhani Pallasmaa
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biophilic beauty
Our established view of architecture and its history is surprisingly limited. Almost all books and courses on architectural history begin with Egyptian architecture, i.e. roughly 5500 years ago. The lack of interest in the origins of human constructions for inhabitation or cosmological and ritual purposes is truly surprising even considering the fact that material remains of earliest constructions of man would not exist. We know that domestication of fire took place about 700,000 years ago, and the centring, focusing and organizing impact of fire is already an architectural ingredient. In fact, the earliest architectural theorist, the Roman Vitruvius Pollio, acknowledges this fact in De Architectura libri decem (Ten Books on Architecture), which he wrote during the first decade of Pax Augusta, c. 30–20 BC. Most treatises associate the origins of architecture in tectonic construction, in other words, assembled masonry or wood structures or moulded clay and mud constructions. However, there is very little doubt in the assumption that human architecture originates in woven fibre structures. Architectural anthropology, a rather recent field of research, studies the origins of certain ritualistic and spatial patterns in the building behaviour of apes.8
Also, the countless vernacular building traditions of the world with their impressive features of adaptation to prevailing local conditions, such as climate and available materials, were not much thought about until Bernard Rudofsky's exhibition Architecture Without Architects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964.9 Anthropological studies have revealed the cultural, symbolic, functional and technical refinements of the unselfconscious processes of construction mediated by illiterate and embodied traditions. However, vernacular traditions still remain as a curiosity in architectural studies, although the deepening of research in the sustainability of human settlements and ways of constructions will certainly awake interest in this neglected area of human building culture.
Animal constructions serve the same fundamental purposes as human constructions; they alter the immediate environment for the benefit of the species by increasing the level of order and predictability of the habitat and improving the probability of survival and procreation. As we know, animal constructions are surprisingly varied. Some degree of building behaviour is practised throughout the entire animal kingdom, and skilful building species are scattered throughout the phyla from protozoa to primates. Pockets of special architectural skill can be found among birds, insects and spiders. It is thought-provoking to realize that the constructions of higher animals are among the least ingenious. Apes, for example, only construct a temporary shelter each night – although there seems to be more organization and skill than we have observed so far – as compared with the termite metropolis of millions of inhabitants which may be utilized for centuries.
The interest in animal architecture among architects and architectural scholars has remained totally anecdotal although inspiring documentation on animal constructions has existed since Reverend John George Wood's remarkable treatise Homes Without Hands published in 1865.10 Karl von Frisch's Animal Architecture of 197411 was instrumental in re‐awaking my own by then already forgotten childhood fascination in building activities of animals. Michael H Hansell's books and exhibition in Glasgow in 1999 have provided scientific ground on the functioning principles as well as materials and ways of constructing among animals.
The book La Poétique de l'espace (1958) by the French philosopher of science and poetic imagery has been one of the most influential books in the recent theorizing of architecture surprisingly includes a chapter on nests.12 He quotes the view of Ambroise Paré written in 1840: “The enterprise and skill with which animals make their nests is so efficient that it is not possible to do better, so entirely do they surpass all masons, carpenters and builders; for there is not a man who would be able to make a house better suited to himself and to his children than these little animals build for themselves. This is so true, in fact, that we have a proverb according to which men can do everything except build a bird's nest”.13
In relation to the size of their builders many animal constructions exceed the scale of human constructions. Others are constructed with a precision unimaginable in human construction. Artifact‐building animals teach us that the organization of even simple animal life is complex and subtle. Close studies by scanning electron microscope (SEM) reveal mind‐boggling refinements of structures in a scale invisible to the human eye and totally beyond the capabilities of human builders, such as the microscopic structural ingenuities of spider or caddis fly larva constructions.
Animals frequently use the same construction materials and construction methods as vernacular human cultures. Regardless of the usually great differences in scale, similarities on a formal level are often surprising. The clay structures of various swallows and wasps resemble structures of American Indians. In traditional African cultures, woven huts often appear as enlarged bird's nests or even constructions of certain fish species. Beaver's curved dam walls fight the pressure of water in the same way as some of our largest and most advanced dams. A tiny butterfly larva may protect its case with a dome assembled of its own larva hair, echoing the geometry of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic structures which are among the most efficient human constructions in their ratio of enclosed volume to weight ever conceived. A Green Building research project (1990) by Future Systems utilizing a jar‐like external shape and a system of natural ventilation strikingly evokes the internal nest shape and automated air‐conditioning system of Macroterms bellicosus termites, one of the finest constructions in the animal kingdom. I have myself paired such similar images, but they are, of course, bound to remain on the level of the similarity of appearance only. These comparisons can be interesting and stimulating but they cannot teach us anything essential, I believe.
So far, the institution that has made the most serious research on the internal logic of certain animal constructions and their adaptability in human architecture is the Institute of Lightweight Structures at the University of Stuttgart directed by Frei Otto, a notable architect and constructor. These studies have focused on net and pneumatic structures.14
After mentioning some parallels, I would like to point out certain significant differences in animal and human architecture. Let me begin with the time factor. Animal building processes are the result of immensely long evolutionary processes, whereas our own architectural history is very short in comparison.
Spiders and their web‐building skills have evolved, perhaps, during some 300 million years; The Economist published high‐resolution X‐ray micro‐tomograph images of 312‐ million‐year‐old fossilized arachnids that had eight legs but lacked spinnerets and presumably could not produce silk. When such periods of evolutionary development are compared with the meagre couple of million years of human development since Homo erectus stood up on two legs, we can easily expect animal building skills to exceed ours. There were surely animal architects on earth for tens of millions of years before Homo sapiens put together his first clumsy structures. As I said earlier, our conventional concepts of architecture are restricted to constructions that have taken place over roughly 5000 years of Western high culture.
Another difference arises from the fact that animal architecture has evolved, and continues to do so, under the laws and control of evolution, whereas human architecture has detached itself from this control mechanism and immediate feedback. Whereas animal structures are continuously tested by the reality of survival, we can, and do, develop absurd architectural ideas without the punishment of natural selection and immediate elimination. As Mies van der Rohe said, we tend to ‘invent a new architecture every Monday morning’. This temporary emancipation from the logic of survival allows us to build totally irrational structures in terms of the real necessities of life. In our ‘Society of the Spectacle’, as Guy Debord calls the current era, architecture has often turned into sheer fashion, representation, aestheticization and visual entertainment. The punishment is delayed, of course, because the false models are not eliminated and, consequently, the causal absurdity becomes a concern for the future generations. It is a sad fact that our architecture keeps developing largely without the test of reality.
Sverre Fehn, the great Norwegian architect, once said to me in a private conversation: ‘The bird nest is absolute functionalism, because the bird is not conscious of its death’.15 This aphoristic and cryptic