Layers of resilience

Abstract

In a context increasingly altered by the climate and biodiversity crises, the theoretical discourse and practices which shape the built environment have shifted in the past 50 years towards sustainable architecture, branching out on various concepts, such as adaptability, material life cycle assessment, circularity, urban mining and the digitization of the construction process. However, these strategies focus primarily on minimizing the environmental impact of the construction industry and thus, on mitigating climate change, while they miss addressing the inevitable impacts of a changing climate on architecture itself. If buildings are to be viewed as material repositories (Rau & Oberhuber, 2022), it becomes crucial to consider not only their material flows, but their material longevity and resilience as well. By perceiving weathering not solely as a destructive process, but as one of material exchange that encompasses both destructive and constructive elements, this research paper aims to identify what kind of constructive processes take place when materials are weathering, as well as what design strategies can facilitate these mechanisms. These phenomena lead to the bioprotection of the built environment and take the shape of physical bioprotection or biomineralization. Moreover, they can be achieved by making use of both natural and engineered ecological dynamics which take place on the outermost layer of a building. The analysis leads to a better understanding of material resilience and aims to contribute to a longer lifespan of the built environment in a changing climate.