FREEFORM CONSTRUCTION HOMEOSTASIS

3D-Mapping of Macrotermes Michaelseni Mounds and Simulation of their Homeostatic Function: Lessons for Human Construction (TERMES)

Haitham Abou-Houley, Jo Darlington, Liam Harrington, Dennis Loveday, Weratunga Malalasekera, Eugene Marias, Rupert Soar, Scott Turner, Henk Versteeg, John Webster

Loughborough University, EPSRC, Cambridge University, State University New York, National Museum Namibia, BPB PLC, HelmX Ltd

  BACKGOUND

Our future construction methods will need to move beyond our current capabilities to meet the expected changes in climate and impending energy shortages.  With Freeform Construction, there is no limit to the level of complexity we can integrate into the structure.  For example, what if we could scan and embed a fully functioning blood vessel system to move liquids, or a respiratory system to move and replenish air, into the very fabric of a building?  With modern scanning techniques and advanced computer simulation, together with the ability to 'print' these structures using Freeform Construction technologies, then we can begin to embed essentially organic functions within inorganic buildings.  This is very real, and the focus of an international effort to capture a very special structure found within the mounds of African termites.  The structure they build within the mound, is so organic that it is able to regulate and control their environment to the levels we currently expect from our heating and cooling systems, except they don’t use electricity to do this and we do.  In effect, termites have evolved a construction method so advanced that it can control its internal environment to within fractions of a degree, regardless of how much the external environment is fluctuating.

  OBJECTIVES

The TERMES project is attempting the world’s first, full sized scan of a mature mound in Namibia, Africa.  The research involves the scanning and capture of the ‘true’ 3D structure of a Macrotermes michaelseni mound. The thousands of scan images will then be reconstructed using the same techniques employed to reassemble ‘cryosliced’, CT or MRI scan data to form a 3D model of the mound geometry. The captured mound geometry will be used in the development of a simulation model of the thermo-regulation and respiratory gas exchange found in a mound. The input variables of the model, i.e., the respiratory output of the termite colony, the permeability of the structure to respiratory gases and the external weather conditions, will be measured in the field. The model will be used to show, for the first time, the process of homeostasis in termite mounds to address the following questions:

  What are the detailed architectures which underlie physiological function in termite mounds?

How do termite mounds integrate and coordinate multiple sources of energy to perform the overarching function of colony ventilation?

  To what extent can the knowledge gained about these phenomena be applied to human construction and hence inform future architectural and engineering construction practice?

Once the underlying function of homeostasis has been identified, the rules which govern adaptive behavior will be assessed for their implications for human construction and habitation. 

Read more about the project and its progress at  www.sandkings.co.uk

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© 2005 Rupert Soar. All rights reserved.