BIOPHILIA, BIOMIMICRY, BIONIC ARCHITECTURE: In searching for a meaningful theory, a conceptual framework on which to construct our architecture, three little letters have sprouted like fresh spring grass — all hail, the prefix bio. Today, in the age of biodiversity, it seems that every other architect has clipped a portion of the Greek root word for life, bios, and attached it, like a philosophical lifeline, to projects. Call the current fascination biomania.

Fashionable “isms,” in this case using nature as referent, sometimes suffer from the self-absorption and arrogance of the arriviste: What could possibly have interested us prior to the enunciation of these critical principles? Yet popular new theories often have roots that go back in time. Such is the case with today’s bioarchitecture.