Render of Cacti Hydration Room

Alumnus Shu Yu Lin (MArch’20) has won a PLAN 2021 Architects of Tomorrow Award in the category of Technology, Material Innovation, and Sustainability for her Masters thesis “Cacti Hydration Room – Biomimicry as a Design Tool for Sustainability”.

The Architects of Tomorrow Special Contest is promoted by THE PLAN as part of THE PLAN AWARD. The subject of the contest is theses for three and five-year bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in in architecture, building engineering/architecture and industrial design.

Cacti Hydration Room Assemblies

Lin’s project explores biomimicry as a design tool for sustainable architecture. Biomimicry, the concept of taking inspiration from flora, fauna, or ecosystems being emulated as a design method, is a growing interest of research in the field of architecture. The project focuses on how to employ biomimicry as a design tool to achieve maximum sustainability. The architecture developed in this project displays how biomimicry can be used as an integrative architectural design element to achieve a harmonic relationship between the building, its users, and the environment.

The project was supervised by Professor James Forren with Professor Brian Lilley and Aaron Outhwaite (BEDS’09) as advisors.