Michael Pawlyn: Using nature's genius in architecture

There was a very interesting talk today at the Aarhus School of Architecture by Michael Pawlyn, in which he stressed 3 key goals that need to be achieved for sustainable architecture.

1) There should be radical increases in resource efficiency (doing more with less, for example the bone material structure of a bird's skull, ETFE for greenhouse windows, etc...)

2) Linear to closed loop (example of a group which took cardboard waste from a restaurant, shredded it, sold it as horse bedding, was paid to collect it after it was soiled, used that waste to grow worms, fed the worms to sturgeon, harvested caviar from the fish, and then sold the caviar in the restaurant.  In some ways it reminded me of the Biodynamic way of farming...)

3) Fossil fuel economy to solar economy (various examples of large scale solar farms including an ambitious system that could turn the Sahara desert into a lush forest again)

The talk touched on many of the same points covered in his TED talk.  Enjoy!