Animal Architecture
From Firenze University Press Book
Edited by:
Matteo Zambelli, University of Florence
As a young boy, I was intrigued by the construction activities of animals. My grandfather’s farm buildings in Central Finland offered possibilities for close observation of the nest building of house martins and swallows; I watched how the birds brought lumps of clay from a nearby mud pond and gradually moulded this shapeless material into their beautiful mud house, cantilevered underneath the cornice. In a barn house I could observe how wasps produced their layered spherical nests, which appeared to be made of paper, and harvesting often revealed touchingly neat woven nests of field mice. And I remember marvelling at spiders’ webs, trying to understand how the tiny animals conceived their apparently perfect structural geometry.
In the river nearby, I found strange miniature constructions assembled from grains of sand and sections of plants: structures that looked like tiny houses, moving mysteriously along the river bottom. Altogether, a lot of diligent and elaborate construction seemed to take place in nature. My early enthusiasm for animal architecture ceased for 35 years, until I found a newly published book entitled Animal Architecture by the Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch in a New York book shop in 1976. I was fascinated by the book and the world it reopened for me. I learned that the tiny constructions moving on the river bottom in my childhood were the sophisticated constructions of caddis-fly larvae. Their masonry work equals the achievements of the best human stone masons, and they also create modular panel constructions of precision cut plant leaves that bring to mind our own principles of modular construction. I also read that, 2,000 years ago, wasps taught the Chinese how to make paper. Similarly, the nesting chambers of potter wasps are believed to have served as models for clay jars for the American Indians.
I learned further that spiders and their net construction techniques have evolved during hundreds of millions of years (fossil spiders have been dated at 395 million years old). Ants tending aphids have been found preserved in amber since early Tertiary period, forty million years ago. In comparison, it is a modest one and a half million years since Homo erectus rose up on his two feet. I was struck by the fact that there were animal architects tens of millions of years before Homo sapiens made his first, clumsy attempts at construction. Animal constructions may surpass our achievements in their functionality, ecological adaptability, structural strength, efficiency of energy systems, economy and precision. The automated ventilation and gas exchange systems of termites, for instance, are amazingly complex and ingenious. The standard cell thickness of the bee’s honeycomb is produced with the staggering tolerance of 0.002 millimetres, which is far beyond the precision of human builders. Thus, in the early 18th century, the famous scientist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur even proposed that the bee cell be made the basic standard of measurement.
Furthermore, I read that the tensile strength of spider thread is more than three times that of steel, and its extension at break is 229 per cent, as compared with the 8 per cent of steel. Having read about these unexpected qualities of animal structures, I wanted to compile an exhibition of these architectural and technical marvels and wrote to von Frisch. Someone replied on his behalf that the famous scientist was already 91 years old and unable to collaborate in the exhibition project. During the years that have passed since my letter to the famed scholar, however, my fascination for the subject has continued. Being a layman in the field of ethology, I have had to rely entirely on a number of books that describe building behaviour of various animal species. Some degree of building behaviour is practised throughout almost the entire animal kingdom. And since it is obvious that architectural constructions are just as essential for the survival of animal species as architecture is for our own existence and the development of our culture, it is surprising how little this subject has been studied. In museums of zoology, animal constructions are shown rather incidentally. The same observation can be made of the majority of animal books. It is obvious that examples of animal artefacts and architecture should not be viewed as isolated objects detached from the behaviour patterns of their makers. Products of animal architecture often appear incredibly beautiful to our eyes, but ‘aesthetics’ is evidently a category of the human mind.
The real beauty of animal architecture is its total integration into the life pattern of its builder, and to the dynamically balanced system of nature. I have gathered views and facts about animal constructions mainly from two seminal books on the subject: Karl von Frisch’s Animal Architecture (1974) presents remarkable constructions through the phyla with exciting illustrations, although from an architectural point of view the structure of the book appears somewhat sporadic.
Michael H. Hansell’s book Animal Architecture & Building Behaviour (1984) analyses animal building behaviour scientifically in the framework of construction and, consequently, brings the matter close to the discipline of architecture. This exhibition could not have taken place without the inspiration and multitude of facts provided by these two books. The group of Finnish experts1 has in many ways helped to shape both my essay and the exhibition. Other sources have been indicated in the list of sources. Due to the great number of references, they have not been identified individually.
Juhani Pallasmaa
DOI: 10.36253/978–88–5518–443–4
Read Full Text: https://fupress.com/catalogo/l-architettura-degli-animali/7111
