OF TERMITES AND ARCHITECTURE

Welcome to my web-site. Take a look through these videos and images of buildings I have designed in Zimbabwe, Australia and China. They look very different from each other because the sites on which they are built are very different from each other; different climates, different peoples and of different resources. You will also see and read a lot about termites and about why I am fascinated in particular by their building processes.

These blind animals live in a world of pheromones; chemical signals like smell. Suppose they place the next mud brick where the smell is strongest. Bearing in mind that I read somewhere that pheromones evaporate, is it air movement or sunlight or both that are the architect of the breathing towers which they are building in front of my eyes?

This could be the case because they appear to be working only where their worksite is the most sheltered from the wind and the sun. If this is what is happening then form they are building follows the process they are following and possibly the optimum form for air extraction is achieved by this simple interaction between the animal and the micro forces of nature.

In this way I get moved to design buildings which attempt to copy processes which I imagine are happening behind what I see of the termite towers and from what I read about them in scientific journals and books by earth scientists.