The use of Physarum Polcephalum as a design guide in architectural and urban design

In the last fifty years, especially with the Industrial Revolution, the damage to nature has been realized; as a result of this, architecture has evolved towards a different point and started to think in mutual with many disciplines in order to expand its boundaries. Among the other disciplines, biology was the most influenced discipline of architecture and in this direction, the concept of biomimicry which examines the methods developed by nature for many years, which has been the greatest source of inspiration for humans since the early ages, has gained an important place among contemporary design approaches. Within the scope of the thesis, firstly, how architecture is inspired from nature in the historical process is explained with examples with various breaking points, and the levels of inspiration are interpreted and developed. Accordingly, biodesign, which means the creation of biological partnerships from new levels of inspiration, is an approach of directly incorporating a living system in nature into the design process, and this thesis primarily focuses on collaborative studies with living beings and biodesign. Physarum Polycephalum, which is one of 900 slime mould species, has an important ability to establish connections between food sources and to find the shortest path. In this thesis, the potentials of P. polycephalum being a guide in urban designs is assessed. Within this scope, an inert area of approximately 40,000 square meters was selected by Karabağlar Municipality in 2017 in Karabağlar District of İzmir Province and a design proposal was developed in line with the behavioral models of slime moulds. Subsequently, a comparative evaluation of the design proposal was made with the projects that were awarded in the competition. As a result, slime moulds found the shortest path and optimized the distances. Considering that it is a difficult and complex process to make major design decisions on an urban scale, slime moulds are predicted to provide inspiration for finding optimal pathways in urban areas and provide guidance to designers.