Site-Specific Bioinspired Architecture-A Case Study of the Allen-Lambe House by Frank Lloyd Wright: The Pragmatic versus the Naturalistic, Intent versus Realization

Research into biomimetics has focused on science and technology, often developing the innovative parts of buildings from nature, leading to a new field of bioinspired architecture. The work of Frank Lloyd Wright is presented as an early example of bioinspired architecture and explores how buildings might be more broadly integrated into their site and environment. Integrating architecture, biomimetics and eco-mimesis as a framework to look at the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, provides a new understanding of his architecture and directions for future research into the ecological design of buildings and cities.

Three Dimensional Printing of Bioinspired Crossed-Lamellar Metamaterials with Superior Toughness for Syntactic Foam Substitution

Biological materials such as conch shells with crossed-lamellar textures hold impressive mechanical properties due to their capability to realize effective crack control and energy dissipation through the structural synergy of interfacial modulus mismatch and lamellar orientation disparity. Integrating this mechanism with mechanical metamaterial design can not only avoid the catastrophic post-yield stress drop found in traditional architectural materials with uniform lattice structures but also effectively maintain the stress level and improve the energy absorption ability. Herein, a novel bioinspired design strategy that combines regional particularity and overall cyclicity is proposed to innovate the connotation of long-range periodicity inside the metamaterial, in which the node constraint gradient and crossed-lamellar struts corresponding to the core features of conch shells are able to guide the deformation sequence with a self-strengthening response during compression. Detailed in situ experiments and finite element analysis confirm that the rotated broad layer stacking can shorten and impede the shear bands, further transforming the deformation of bioinspired metamaterial into a progressive, hierarchical way, highlighted by the cross-layer hysteresis. Even based on a brittle polymeric resin, excellent specific energy absorption capacity [4544 kJ/kg] has been achieved in this architecture, which far exceeds the reported metal-based syntactic foams for two orders of magnitude. These results offer new opportunities for the bioinspired metamaterials to substitute the widespread syntactic foams in specific applications required for both lightweight and energy absorption.