Bi: The Origin of Architectural Creativity / 9 Modules for Non-linear Interactive Design Flow

Nature doesn’t necessarily mean creativity, yet its diversity and beauty are stunning. We call the mechanism behind this unintended creativity of nature “BI” – Biological Intelligence. The design and construction of a building is very much like the creation of life. The intention of Biological intelligence (BI) is to understand how life is born, wither, born again, and to follow the principles of evolution so architecture can also enter a sustainable cycle of design, construct, operate, and disassemble and regenerated according to its new condition. The three categories: “Origin,” “Form,” and “Interface” loosely resembles lives’ condition of “Habitat” “Physical Form” and “Interaction with outside.” Each category contains three modules; all the nine modules contain elements that architects have been familiar with for thousands of years. They exist as nine toolboxes that architects need and use during the design process – the creation of architecture. “BI” is a bigger box that holds the nine boxes together. The same way as nature never intends to create anything, most of architecture’s great inventions aren’t created intentionally. Rather than boosting design creativity, the mechanism we introduce in this book proves to accompany architects strolling through the maze of architecture improving the creation of architecture similarly to how nature creates itself.

Ying-Chao Kuo is the principal architect of Bio-architecture Formosana. Graduated with a M.Arch from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1989, he has taught at National Cheng Kung University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and National Chiao Tung University as an adjunct professor. He has won numerous awards for his design in sustainability.

Ching-Hwa Chang is the principal architect of Bio-architecture Formosana. Graduated with a M.Arch from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, she has taught at National Cheng Kung University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and is a member of USGBC. She has won numerous awards for her ecological design.