Wow, well I stumbled upon this and it is pretty amazing.
Biomimicry uses nature as its motivation, as its perfect example of keeping cool, warming up and surviving.
This has been done with a building in Harare, Zimbabwe. There have been issues around Zimbabwe in terms of inflation, leadership and poverty. However, this building is a shining beacon of beauty (not so much aesthetically, as you will see, but beautiful in other ways).
So apparently, termites in Zimbabwe build gigantic mounds inside of which they farm a fungus that is their primary food source. The fungus must be kept at exactly 28 degrees while the temperatures outside range from 2 degrees to 35 degrees during the day and night. The termites achieve this by constantly opening and closing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout the mound over the course of the day. With a system of carefully adjusted convection currents, air is sucked in at the lower part of the mound, down into enclosures with muddy walls, and up through a channel to the peak of the termite mound. The industrious termites constantly dig new vents and plug up old ones in order to regulate the temperature.
The building used natures own mechanisms to have no heating or cooling system, but instead relies on a series of vents.
Wow. Nature at work.
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