Vigorous Environments

At this point in the post, I have only gotten to the second page of text, where the concept of Vigorous Environment is being broken down into its constituent parts of vigour, environment, and the inherent ecology at play.  It seems to me that the idea of adaptation is playing heavily into the innovative threads of modern day architecture movements, and as a result, the precedent focus is shifting back to nature.  As an interesting side note, the topic of bio-mimicry is well documented on TED [ted.com], including many inspiring lectures that give foreshadowing into methods by which adaptations in nature are making appearances in technology and even building design.  For example, the whale shark has a pattern of ridges on its skin which serve 1) as protection, but also actively reduce its drag as it is moving through the water.  Think of Studio Gang's office tower in Chicago.

This is that very same technology adapted to the skin in between the floors.  The undulating form responds to the wind loads in the Windy City, and similarly reduces the impact of the wind on the building by up to 20%.  Doing so allowed for the upper floors of the tower to be utilized for office space as the skin compensates for the traditional method of including an wind damper.  Garth Rockcastle once said, "Everyday I watch the Discovery Channel, and there's always some weird animal that has some kind of weird adaptation to suit its environment."