Help! We’re Drowning in Bio-Lingo

Early in her career (this was the ’90s), architect Tracy Stone got a chance to work with Ray Kappe, the deeply rooted SoCal architect revered for his warm take on Modernism. Kappe liked his clients to feel super-connected to the natural elements already in play on a site. “To experience each tree to its fullest and to create an ambience sensitive to light and sounds are prime goals,” he once said, a biophilic ethos if there ever was one. Stone was fascinated by how Kappe pulled it off with the simplest palette of materials.

“The first house I worked on with him didn’t have one piece of drywall in it,” she remembers. “And that was the Keeler Residence!” 

Stone’s respect for Kappe’s short list of “honest” building components endured. She branded her own practice “California modern architect with a focus on natural materials.” But three decades later, she’s found it increasingly difficult to discern what’s natural and what’s a petrochemical mash-up. Even sourcing a product as simple as rubber base molding, something that would logically come from a rubber tree, requires reconnaissance. Are the “rubber” trims on offer bendy and rubberlike? Yes, but what are they really made of, and in what percentages? What do labels like “biobased” or “biosourced” guarantee, if anything? And which manufacturers are willing to be fully transparent about any of this?

“I call ’em sometimes,” she says, ready to keep asking questions until she knows for sure. 

Complicating the quest is the fact that professionals (even the eco-sensitive) at various points along the supply chain are operating with different definitions of the same bio-labels. Legal standards and certifications haven’t quite caught up with the growing urgency industry-wide to specify lower embodied carbon, and less toxic materials. So, in the same way a well-drawn lime-green leaf on a package can mislead, the letters B-I-O worked into a product description can suggest a noble origin story that might be largely fictional. “It’s a bit of a swamp out here,” says Alison Mears, cofounder of the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab in New York. “These terms are being used by any number of people to indicate a little sprinkling of something that maybe one time was a plant.” 

Not only is this confusing to designers making product choices on deadline, but a word like “biobased” can still spook a facility manager or building inspector comfortable with the established solidity of conventional building products. In ultrapractical ways, words matter. 

Clarity is coming. Scores of academics and practitioners are working hard right now to help each other define and discern which natural and nature-inspired materials meet specific goals. They are using tools and lists like the HPD (Health Product Declaration) Standard and mindful MATERIALS. The Parsons Healthy Materials Lab has developed a compendium of these sorts of tools, along with its own vetted lists of categorized building products, like 16 “Adhesives, Mortars, Grouts, and Sealants.” Meanwhile, here’s a stab at working definitions for six commonly used bio-words, based on interviews with some of the people paying the closest attention.

bi·o·based

/bīō bāst/

One of the sexiest terms in architecture today, this word has launched federal grants, cool chemistry experiments, and a fascinating array of building materials composed—at least in part—of once-living things. Mycelium, bacteria, and any number of plants or proteins with a history of growing or respirating can anchor a biobased material. Examples include the “Bio-Blocks” engineered by Prometheus Materials that employ “microalgae along with other essential components” as an alternative to Portland cement, or Yale professor Mae-ling Lokko’s research into adhesives and acoustic paneling developed from the fiber of discarded coconut husks. Dissertation-worthy as they are, each of these material compositions raises more questions. If it works in a lab, what kinds of conditions will it require to work on a building site? How much energy is burned to make it? And what else is in it? In November 2023, a group called the Northeast Bio-Based Materials Collective held a summit in Boston to discuss such questions. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is using its own definition of “biobased products” in its BioPreferred Program, which claims to “increase the use of renewable agricultural resources” with more than 3,000 companies as participants. The program allows different product types to call themselves “biobased” at different levels of natural components—carpets with seven percent biological content can get the label, while wallcoverings must attain at least 62 percent. Watch this space: The label is evolving fast.

bi·o·sourced

/bīō sōrst/

Here’s where we start confounding the word police: Many smart people are using “biobased” and “biosourced” interchangeably. One way into a more specific conversation is this trick: When you see the word “biosourced,” ask, “From where?” The answer will most likely be geographical and point you toward some sort of agricultural crop. “It has some overlap with ‘biobased,’ but we think of [‘biosourced’ as] something that’s derived from a renewable biological source,” says Parsons Healthy Materials Lab cofounder and design director Jonsara Ruth. “‘Renewable’ is the key term there.” Columbia’s Ben-Alon concurs. “‘Biosourced’ is a bit narrower, talking about materials chemically speaking in the polysaccharides group: starches and sugars, not proteins or fats.” Translation: mostly plant-based. Pinpointing where a crop is cultivated opens the door to some other fertile areas of inquiry: fair labor practices and the carbon costs of transport. 

bi·o·de·grad·a·ble

/bīōde grādeb(e)l/

Though this word may still be confusing for consumers, it’s one that most architects and designers have a decent handle on. We’re talking about how products break down at the end of their life cycles and what impact that decomposition has on ecosystems. There’s a time factor in play: For example, the EPA gives “biodegradable plastics” a one-year deadline for complete decomposition, and warns that just because a plastic is labeled biosourced and compostable does not mean it belongs in a backyard bin. Seemingly safe building products like bamboo, cork, or timber may have been covered in a chemical sealant or processed in a way that makes them more long-lasting and toxic wherever they land. And even if natural materials remain truly compostable, they won’t get to fulfill their regenerative potential and nourish soil unless there’s viable composting infrastructure in place. The University of Washington’s Kate Simonen, founding director of the Carbon Leadership Forum, has been focused recently on LCAs (life cycle assessments) and lowering the environmental impact of building materials. From an emissions perspective, Simonen would rather products stay out of the waste stream altogether. “Buildings are the closest thing we have to permanent storage,” she says.

bi·o·phil·ic

/bīō fi lik/

The most poetic word on the bio-list, this adjective describes an enduring, powerful, and instinctual love affair between humans and the natural world, our original habitat. It speaks to our innate, largely positive response to the sight of dappled sunlight or the surprising sensation of a breeze making its way to our desk through an operable window. Biophilic design attempts to maximize those encounters, and science has confirmed the health benefits, from faster healing rates in hospitals to better mental states in the workplace. But in the context of a natural materials discussion, there’s a twist. “Something can be biophilic and not healthy,” says Catie Ryan, an environmental design consultant at Terrapin Bright Green. “It might have a positive impact from looking at it, but if it’s doing other harm, that’s a whole other level. It doesn’t come up enough.” Imagine wall-to-wall carpeting in an open office with the elegant, abstract design of a kelp forest: lovely, but not if it’s off-gassing VOCs to everyone in the room. “There’s a lot of challenges, especially in interior design,” says Ryan. While the concept of biophilia has been well integrated (even in real estate ads) and standardized over the past quarter century, there’s a lot of work to be done in the development and sourcing of nontoxic, nonpolluting products in price ranges that designers and their clients will accept.

bi·o·mim·ic·ry 

/bīō mimekrē/ 

Biomes shaped like bubbles. Pavilions shimmering like beetle wings. Earthen structures aiming for the thermal regulation of a termite mound. More a movement than simply an idea, biomimicry suggests observing nature’s patterns or processes and then adopting them, often quite literally, in design, engineering, and other problem-solving pursuits. It’s a broader concept than biophilia and was popularized with a 1997 book by Janine Benyus and resulting public television specials and TED Talks. The Biomimicry Institute, a nonprofit based in Montana, was founded in 2006. Its strategy today, according to CEO Amanda Sturgeon, is “bridging between ecological systems and species biology…with folks who don’t have any of that knowledge that are in the design space or social systems space.” Sturgeon says she’s seen more ecological literacy and “bio-inspired” designs in the building products space recently. The institute has an accelerator to fund ventures like ECOncrete, and its COASTALOCK product that mimics marine rocks and reefs. There’s no official standard for a biomimetic product, so let the designer beware: Even with “nature’s genius” as inspiration, it takes a human to ask critical questions about the material composition of these products. You don’t want to copy nature and harm it at the same time. 

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• Manufacturing

• Audrey Gray
• Bio-based Materials
• Biophilia
• Construction Materials
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