The presence of biomimicry principles in Malaysian green building rating tools

Abstract

Concerns about climate change and global warming have initiated consciousness of environmental approaches in the planning and development of the built environment. Among them are the green building rating systems (LEED, BREEAM, GBI, etc.) as advocated by many countries to create more sustainable and responsible buildings and developments that are less harmful to the environment. Although good and novel, this thesis looks at the integration of biomimicry into those rating systems for achieving a higher level of sustainability upon the natural environment. The study aims to assess the presence of Biomimicry Life’s Principles (BLP) and the extent of their presence in one of green building rating tools, which is the Green Building Index (GBI) Malaysia. The study utilized the content analysis method to explore the synergy between the existing green building rating systems and the biomimicry frameworks for achieving high level of sustainable development. Such bio-integration is recommended to improve the development of effective, regionally sensitive and energy efficient built environment for creating better social equalities. The results demonstrated that most of the Biomimicry Life’s Principles (13 out of 20) existed within the GBI but in a very low extent, the presence percentage is 4.7%. Only two of the BLP were fully fulfilled meaning that all of their sub-principles existed in the GBI. The BLP are “Be Resource Efficient (Energy and Materials)” and “Adapt to Changing Conditions”. Each main principle of BLP existed in some parts of the GBI except that “Be Resource Efficient (Materials & Energy)” appeared in all of GBI parts but with different levels of fulfillment. The Energy Efficiency (EE) part of the GBI had the highest numbers of BLP (35% or 7 out of 20 sub-principles). It is recommended that the further studies should be about how to apply or employ the missing principles in the GBI to enhance it further. It is also recommended that more studies are required on ways to increase the extent of using Biomimicry strategies into existing criteria in the GBI for a more holistic rating tool.