Hypernatural: Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature

Recent decades have witnessed the increasing popularity of nature-focused movements such as sustainability, biophilia, biomimicry, biodesign, and emergent design. These movements are dramatically altering the relationship between the designed environment and the natural world, and although overlaps exist, there is no common discourse that unites these areas of study. A holistic framework is therefore needed to address these disparate areas of inquiry, the full spectrum of their operations, and their common goals and methodologies. Hypernatural addresses the ways in which design increasingly works directly with natural processes—rather than against them—in order to amplify, extend, or exceed natural capacities.

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Speaker Bio:

Blaine Brownell is an architect and former Fulbright scholar with a focus on emergent materials and applications. He is a principal of the design and research practice Transstudio and an associate professor and director of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Minnesota College of Design.