Article

Bioreceptive Building Materials for Urban Ecology

Shaista Parveen ORCID , Muhammad Tariq
    Received
    13 Oct 2025
    Published
    24 Nov 2023

    Abstract

    Bioreceptive building materials represent an emerging intersection of architecture, ecology, and materials science in which surfaces are intentionally designed to encourage colonization by microorganisms, mosses, lichens, and other organisms. Compared to traditional strategies of seeing biological growth as an act of degradation, the bioreceptive design is changing the concept of colonization to be a form of ecological provision. This review follows the intellectual lineage of bioreceptivity and how the concepts have been developed bioreceptivity is an extension of colonization receptivity, which is premised on chemical, physical and environmental factors influencing material receptivity to colonization. It takes an inventory of diverse classes of materials--literally modified concretes, ceramics, bio-based composites, and treated surfaces--with an emphasis on how each can be tuned to support biological communities. Ecological roles of such materials are as diverse as sustaining biodiversity and enhancing air quality; moderating microclimates; and carbon sequestration to augment the larger-scale green infrastructure. Concurrently, the discipline has major issues such as technical longevity, esthetics acceptability, environmental hazards and absence of standardized laboratory procedures. In prospect, the creation of multi-functional, sustainable, and digital optimized materials provides interesting lines of development. In this way, bioreceptive building materials open up a new prospect of ecologically more congruent cities where buildings are seen not as a passive framework, but as a colonizer of urban ecosystems.

    Keywords

    Biodiversity, Bioreceptive Materials, Concrete Colonization, Sustainable Architecture, Urban Ecology

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