Biogenic construction: The new era of civil engineering

Abstract

With the increasing demand for buildings and infrastructures and the mounting challenges associated with the current construction technologies such as high emission, high pollution, and high energy consumption, the civil engineering profession is at the crossroad for a transformation or upgrading before it can be put into tasks for these challenges. Inspired by the concept of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, a new concept, biogenic construction, for civil engineering is proposed in this paper. The definition of biogenic construction is given. The framework and four components of biogenic construction are established. These include microbial construction, plant construction, animal construction, and bioinspired construction. Examples of each component are given. A new construction system for creating a more eco-friendly, healthier, and more sustainable environment for future civil engineering developments is also proposed.

Keywords

Biogenic / construction

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hanlong Liu: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Software, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Hanlong Liu is the Editor-in-chief for Biogeotechnics and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Professor Jian Chu of Nanyang Technological University for his advice in preparing the manuscript. Suggestions from the Microbial Soil Group in Chongqing University for improving the manuscript are greatly appreciated.

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