Inspired by Nature: Plants
The Building/Botany Connection

Alejandro Bahamón, Patricia Pérez, and Alex Campello

Overview

Nature has always furnished stimulating ideas for the design of architecture, both vernacular and in the work of major architects. Inspired by Nature: Plants looks at how the plant world serves as a useful source of inspiration, whether intentional or unconscious, for great contemporary architecture. Accompanying the images of built examples ranging from houses to hotels, schools, and commercial and industrial projects, are botanical drawings and an explanation of why natural forms make good models for structure. The visual analogies underline how architects can find elegant solutions and create new, sustainable, and efficient architectonic forms by the close and understanding observation of nature.

About the Authors

Alejandro Bahamón, an architect, photographer, and editor of architecture books, is the author of numerous publications on contemporary architecture. Patricia Pérez, a landscape engineer, directs the landscape architecture department at the Diputación de Barcelona and is a professor in the master of landscape architecture program at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. Alex Campello, an architect and landscape architect, teaches at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Barcelona.

ISBN 10: 0-393-73251-7
ISBN 13: 978-0-393-73251-1
April 2008 / 240 color photographs, 125 line drawings / 192 pages / paperback