As a highly interdisciplinary field, architecture is being influenced by many subjects of natural and social sciences. Biology despite being apparently distant from architecture is currently a scientific field blending into design practices, which have evolved and shifted towards a new hybrid framework. In this article, we present an emerging design field of what we categorize as biomimetic architecture pioneering by six architectural offices in France. We observe the impact of scientific researches on design processes and practices through six case studies led by these offices, which can be seen through the actors who involved in various types of interdisciplinary collaborations, through the competencies of the architect himself, and through new sources of ideas coming from biological sciences and related fields. We propose to use a classification of theoretical uses in modeling practice to better understand the role that biological knowledge plays in architectural design practices. Finally, the result of this analysis shows that the use of biology taking place in a design space has external purposes, which transform it to produce engineering devices or urban schemes rather than architectural projects. It also shows that biology in architectural design induces other kinds of non-biological knowledge, is not strictly theoretical and could be obsolete or approximate. These findings lead to an epistemological discussion concerning the confusion between biological ‘knowledge’ and architectural design ‘know-how’.

作为一个高度跨学科的领域，建筑正受到许多自然科学和社会科学学科的影响。尽管显然与建筑相距甚远，但生物学目前是一个融入设计实践的科学领域，设计实践已经发展并转向新的混合框架。在本文中，我们介绍了一个新兴的设计领域，我们将其归类为仿生建筑由法国的六个建筑事务所开创。我们通过这些办公室领导的六个案例研究观察科学研究对设计过程和实践的影响，这些研究可以通过参与各种跨学科合作的参与者、建筑师本人的能力以及新的来自生物科学和相关领域的想法。我们建议在建模实践中使用理论用途的分类，以更好地理解生物知识在建筑设计实践中的作用。最后，该分析的结果表明，在设计空间中使用生物学具有外部目的，这将其转化为生产工程设备或城市方案，而不是建筑项目。它还表明，建筑设计中的生物学引发了其他类型的非生物学知识，不是严格的理论知识，可能是过时的或近似的。这些发现导致了关于生物“知识”和建筑设计“诀窍”之间混淆的认识论讨论。