Water Balancing Strategies of Organisms and Bio-informed Building Envelope Design

Today, a considerable amount of the world population lives under high water stress and many countries have difficulties in accessing water resources. When posterity is considered, it is clear that the existing clean water resources should be protected. Since a significant part of the water consumption in the world takes place in urban areas, it has become an important research topic to produce water saving strategies while designing built environments. Studies show that effective and sustainable alternative solutions can be obtained from strategies available in nature. In this context, the study focuses on bio-informed methods that can be used to save water and gain water with building shells, which are the building elements where the most interaction with the external environment occurs. For this purpose, first of all, the living things that stand out in water management strategies have been researched, and the features and mechanisms of these creatures that provide water management have been explained. Afterwards, how bio-informed solutions can be applied through the selected design examples have been searched and evaluated. As a result, it has been seen that the water balance strategies of the creatures in nature can offer innovative solutions to the building envelope design, but it is necessary to facilitate the search and selection of suitable strategies from the wide database of nature. It was highlighted that designers who have limited biological knowledge require interfaces that will facilitate data transfer from biology to architecture.