Architecture of ant hills and
their subterranean colonies are eye opening examples of the amazing world of
brainless creature’s design excellence. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony , http://www.core77.com/blog/architecture/walter_tschinkels_aluminum_casts_of_ant_colonies_reveals_insect_architecture_23607.asp, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWVx9K7KwBA
) They seem to be great city planners
and architects of underground cities of up to a million inhabitants. Different researchers have studied them by pouring
molten aluminium, plastics, or by pumping liquid concrete into mouths of the
subterranean ant colonies ( cruel way , one could say) to study the complexity
and design of these underground cities.
The results show that ant colonies go as deep as 3 M and have corridors connecting bulbous spaces
in several layers below earth. Taken out of earth carefully, the hardened
aluminium mould looks a chandelier like structure. Or like a Calderian sculpture. Some ants also
build structures up to sixty feet above the earth’s surface, using saliva and
mud particles. They are inspiring as sustainable creations as they are zero carbon zero waste systems, amazingly resource efficient, and energy efficient as well in creating thermal environment. They show great efficiency
in structure, material
manufacture, in water use as well as energy generation and management . A social haemostasis of self regulation is achieved
it, is said.
(for more details see http://www.esf.edu/efb/turner/termitePages/termiteMain.html)
Researcher Prof. Tshinkel with aluminum cast of ant colones.
Similarly
there are efficient hanging and aerial cities of bees and wasps produced with
saliva and pulp. Some hive walls of one
millimetre thickness has a thermal insulation quality equivalent to a nine inch
thick brick wall! One can wonder
endlessly on natures marvels.
Great designs as we, the designers of human habitat see it; innovative in their own right, sustainable in
an anthropo-centric way. Are we studying, marvelling and evaluating their architecture
as a future to get out of our own environmental predicaments? Certainly there
may be many things we can learn from them. But are they really adaptable to our
needs and do they really hold ways to achieve sustainable future?
Biomimicry or biomimetics is about mimicking
nature for human tooling. Velcro is an adaptation of the way certain
insects hang on to goat skin intvented by
a Swedish scientist. Architecture has been mimicking nature in building
and making tools for long in form making. We copied forms and shapes of nature;
shells, skeletons leaves and flowers and animal shapes, in different materials
for its aesthetic appeal. Modular by Le Corbusier was adapted the proportions found in nature. Innovative
adaptations they are. But larger system like ant colonies is more
complex than just amazing forms. The crux of the matter is actually in knowing
the way these systems came about in nature and the process of getting there. All
this with out a hierarchical command structure or a Central Processing Unit.
Understanding iterating algorithms and devising codes which dumb robots can
perform repeatedly and which become parts of a grand design is being explored
for long time. That of course with the help of a speed computer these days. Much
community traditional architecture of the past were by evolving simple codes
woven into a grand pattern without self-conscious effort. The complexity of
woven textiles of Patola , handloom designs of many places in India, the
carpets of Kashmir, architecture of Kerala and Kathmandu valley are examples
such designs evolution. So are many
organic settlements. which are just accretions of individual efforts.
Ants and bees achieve all this without any
formal schooling, no long hours of slogging in studios, no parametric design
iteration, no low paid internship ; they
are efficient in that way too. Their
efficiency lies in their political and labour management system; a Queendom of labourers with a busy queen (or queens,
there are some ant varieties with oligarchic and multi queen colonies)
producing and laying eggs and reproducing labourers, who untiringly keep
working on an assigned repetitive task that they are programmed to do
efficiently. Like robots. They are also ruthlessly controlled by natural
selection of their efficiency and perhaps the total population as well to suit
the locations, resources and natural features of their habitat. This may include succumbing totally or
partially to natural catastrophes. Sometimes manmade or other animal made too. Even
the organic settlements of humans are no more tenable with ever changing
economic systems modifying the politics and societal structure; globally and
locally.
In second thinking these amazing world of tiny
no brain creatures is to see not as great store house of ideas for sustainable
design, but as a design of a habitat system that suits and evolves out of a
unique political and social organisation. Environmental adaptation seems the
only aim in their production systems and habitat systems. Limited or no
innovation is high priority, sensuous sensibility is not a design aim at all;
it is all utilitarian dictated by the societal structure. Above all there is no
private property and no desire to excel or show off wealth or intelligence more
than the other. Snobbery is design
force, for humans. No fast movement, pace is same as always has been, no new
acquired abilities over centuries. A
total antithesis to cultural world of humans and their evolution. Amazing as
they are, will these habitat systems give any clue to organise our world? Who
wants to live like an ant or a bee even if as a queen of a kingdom or queendom?
