ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how architects and artists develop their work through looking at nature and finding role models for proto-architectural applications. It also describes the example of the artistic research project GrAB – Growing As Building, which was conducted between 2013 and 2016 at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with an interdisciplinary and international team of architects, artists, engineers and scientists. Landscape architecture is probably one of the oldest examples of ‘designing with organisms’. The landscape architect defines structures, boundaries and constraints in which nature operates. The resulting emergent landscape is a constant dialogue between man’s interventions and nature’s internal dynamics. The integration of living organisms into this venture allows for a radically different, hybrid approach that could lead to a yet unimaginable future. The resulting blurring between architecture and natural environment coming out of the practice of co-designing with nature could be an answer to the problematic opposition between the built and natural environment.
