Nature-inspired design is fine, but let's not get carried away

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The hype about green design risks tipping over into quasi-religion, but we can't look to nature to tell us how to organise society

Let me tell you why I don’t like it when architects design pillars and columns that look like trees and branches. Given the opportunity, very few of them, it seems, can resist the urge. They call them “dendriform” columns. Some of the very best architects in the world have done it.

You’ll find them on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Building and on the Mall of Africa. The more you look, the more you’ll start seeing branches and canopies sprouting from pillars wherever you go. Some of them are undeniably beautiful, playing with fractals and geometric patterns to pay tribute to what is in many ways nature’s proto-shelter: the tree. And some of the architecture is very good. But they make me suspicious...

 

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