Multispecies Architectural Design: Challenges and Opportunities

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 May 2024 | Viewed by 2315

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Interests: building; green building; architecture; building technology; sustainable construction; construction technology; sustainable architecture; green architecture; sustainability; theory of architecture
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid expansion of the global human population has resulted in a significant decline in biodiversity. Conventional environmental design approaches have proven insufficient in tackling this pressing issue, necessitating innovative research at the building scale. Multispecies design, which acknowledges non-human species as active stakeholders, represents a paradigm shift away from anthropocentric architectural design.

To effectively design for multispecies environments, interdisciplinary collaboration between architecture, ecology, and animal geography is crucial. This collaboration should aim to generate new knowledge, design methods, and tools that enable the translation of non-human species' needs into architectural form.

This Special Issue highlights the urgency to address declining biodiversity through multispecies design and investigates the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating ecological knowledge into architectural practice. By embracing the needs of non-human species, built environments have the potential to foster biodiversity conservation and facilitate a more harmonious coexistence between humans and the natural world.

Dr. Yasha Jacob Grobman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • multispecies design
  • ecology
  • animal-aided design
  • biodiversity
  • zoomorphic architecture
  • organic architecture
  • biomimicry
  • sustainability
  • computational design
  • green buildings

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 9803 KiB  
Article
Utilizing Design Objectives and Key Performance Indicators as a Means for Multi-Species Building Envelopes
by Soultana Tanya Saroglou, Surayyn Uthaya Selvan, Laura Windorfer, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Jens Joschinski, Thomas E. Hauck, Katia Perini, Francesca Mosca, Yasha J. Grobman and Shany Barath
Buildings 2024, 14(1), 250; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14010250 - 16 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1156
Abstract
Population growth, urbanization, and climate change have significantly contributed to environmental degradation, posing severe consequences for humans and other species. By integrating ecological objectives with human-centric goals, a path towards a sustainable, multi-species future is possible. Current sustainable design principles have shown positive [...] Read more.
Population growth, urbanization, and climate change have significantly contributed to environmental degradation, posing severe consequences for humans and other species. By integrating ecological objectives with human-centric goals, a path towards a sustainable, multi-species future is possible. Current sustainable design principles have shown positive environmental impacts by addressing human-centric objectives such as enhancing green infrastructure, energy efficiency, thermal comfort, and more. However, the incorporation of multi-species design criteria remains unresolved. This paper proposes a conceptual framework in which human-centric and ecological design objectives are defined and associated through the selection of key performance indicators (KPIs) represented by numerical thresholds. But, while the objective-KPI relationship is an established path in architectural design, the same does not apply for preserving and promoting biodiversity. The proposed conceptual framework identifies, defines, and associates the relevant objective-KPI relationships for all stakeholders and becomes the basis for evaluating the project computationally. Such an approach is currently lacking. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multispecies Architectural Design: Challenges and Opportunities)
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