Research Project: Heterogeneous Space and Multi-performativity - A biological Paradigm for Architectural Design
Principal Researcher: Michael U. Hensel _ Dipl. Ing. Grad Dipl Des AA Architekt AKNW
Research Period: 2006-2010
Research Status: ongoing PhD thesis research

Today questions of the relation between design and sustainability of architectures become increasingly urgent. The purpose of this research is to critically review the currently prevailing paradigm and mode of operation of architects and to set this against the possibility of a biological paradigm for architectural design that relates material form to higher-level functionality for the benefit of a mutual modulation with the environment and a greater social and environmental sustainability of the human environment, moving towards a new paradigm of heterogeneous space.

The key questions that underlie this research are: [i] what is the underlying operative model of heterogeneous space that architecture should aspire to and why and how should it do so? [ii] How can a more advanced approach to architectural design arise from gaining functional principles from nature and translating them into design and engineering solutions?
[iii] What are the ramifications of employing a literal biological paradigm to architectural design?

The underlying assumptions are:
- Operative and instrumental approaches to heterogeneous space will deliver great potential for a critical redefinition of democratic space;
- Instrumentalising principles of nature will yield greater effectiveness through a design approach that is based on multiple criteria optimization;
- Utilizing a much greater range of scales of magnitudes of system articulation and inter-scalar functional relations, like in natural systems, will exponentially enhance performance capacity.
- Achieving better material performance through considering material makeup and layout, based on Biomimetic engineering, will greatly increase the performative capacity of the material systems that make up the built environment;
- Employing a literal biological paradigm for architectural design will depend a very different disciplinary relation between architecture and biology and yield an as of yet unknown dimension of functionality and performative capacity.