Bau Biology and Sustainability
As I continue my studies as a Building Biologist, my course from Germany by Dr Anton Schneider in BAU BIOLOGY, I am integrating my current knowledge to this format. The main philosophy of Bau biology is “to promote a holistic, sustainable, ecological, and building biology-based approach to building.”
Schneider published the 25 basic rules of building biology", which states the founding principles to create healthy, beautiful, and sustainable buildings in ecologically sound and socially connected communities. This includes selection of materials and with consideration of the design of living environments, ecological, economic, and social aspects.
IBN: Bau Biology - 25 Principles
Building Biology is the study of the indoor environment can how it can affect our health. Research shows how the indoor dwelling can be seen as living organism that impact our lives every day. This not only affects our physical health but can also psychologically affect our moods, mental health, and spirit. We can now test and measure certian aspects of the interior that can affect our daily lives from emfs, chemicals, air toxins, fungus, and gases. Building biology creates building and communities within the concepts of nature.
Building ecology is using natural elements in the environment to complement our interconnection of our bodies to the built environment. We can support our ecosystem by complementing our living spaces to our environment in healthy ways and provide support to one another. How we interact with our living spaces impacts us greatly and we must find a healthy balance that supports us all. In this way, sustainable living is how our lifestyle impacts environmental, economic, and social aspects to our built environment.
Building biology is about living in harmony with the built environment, including eco communities. This is a current trend is one of the easiest way to keep our resources local and help ease the huge supply and demand chain of our resources by utilizing these mono culture communities.
Photos: Unsplash
I am listing some of the solutions for implementing eco-communities recommendations: adding green living walls, planting trees, keeping water resources clear, creating more wetlands, and also by creating more local community eco systems, we can reduce the wasteful aspects of large scale farming. This can alleviate the issues of using toxic chemicals, pesticides, abusing large scale livestock farms, contaminating our animals and foods, using toxic fertilizers and instead, having us become more humane in our food production, treatment of animals, and our planet’s resources.
We need better storage systems of our water supply, preserve the quality of our soil, and better ways on how we process our live organisms. Smaller scale farming (eco-communities) will be the solution to keeping our environment healthy and able to keep our agriculture free of toxins from large scale consumption. These mono cultures help keep our soil, air, water and forests green as larger scale farming and agriculture use too many of our resources. By implementing the eco communities with only a few small steps, things like: growing our own local food, meadows and forests, we can accelerate the habitat value and provide protection to our environment.
It’s more important than ever to save our earth’s natural resources and use natural materials to improve our health and wellness. We are dealing with climate changes, scarce resources, illness, abuse of materials, and toxic exposures to emfs, and chemicals on products and building materials. Our homes and dwelling areas are our second skin and affects us greatly, and study our interactions between us and the built environment, we can provide a safe space to thrive in.
We are responsible for our living environment as well as the preservation of our earth’s resources. By planning in this way, we can create a more sustainable way of life.