Naturalism in Architecture Creating a Culture of Resilience Houssameldeen Bahgat El Refeie

Naturalism is the philosophy that adopted the theory of evolution and the domination of natural properties. The popularity of naturalism was due to the rise of the extensive biological researches and the evolution of natural sciences by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The emergence and the rise of these scientific theories were the contributing factors to the domination of naturalistic trends. It had an ample impact on urban and architectural schemes. Environmental catastrophes and the climate change that followed the second world war that reached its peak in the last two decades of the twentieth century were the major factors in attracting the attention to the importance of preserving nature. Naturalism was inspired by biological theories using a biological metaphor. The philosophy brought to mind techno-scientific images which drew out the concept of genetic architecture. These images tried to synchronize with the natural variables in order to achieve the concept of sustainable development. This paper aims to examine the concept of sustainable architecture by studying the architectural movements that are influenced by nature and biological theories, such as terms, models, projects, and buildings. For a deep understanding of the current discourse, this paper searches for the impact of the philosophy of naturalism on the history of sustainable architecture. The paper focuses on the notion of resilience while picturing the transformation of economic, political, social and physical structures into resilient urban spaces and organizational patterns which have the potential to grow and change—a subject mostly presented in a historical review.