This, however, necessitated its reconfiguration so as to be useful for architects. Then, the ThBA was used to introduce innovative solutions for improving the thermal performance of the case studies with big energy use to reveal unexpected techniques or technologies. For this, a series of case studies were selected and for each an energy simulation was run to analyse its thermal performance and identify its thermal challenges. Having the ThBA confirmed, the research also investigated how the heat transfer principles in buildings can be articulated to be linked to the generalised thermal adaptation strategies in nature. The biological part of the ThBA was assessed by biological experts within a focus group session. The proposed ThBA was confirmed and evaluated before it was used for the rest of the research. The ThBA was developed by studying biology to find how thermal regulation strategies used by living organisms can be classified and generalised.

What the research investigated was to find if it is possible to develop a generalised thermo-bio-architectural (ThBA) framework by use of which architects would be able to improve the energy performance of buildings in a wide range of climates, by following a systematic process that methodically connects design thermal challenges to thermal adaptation principles used in nature.

Various tools for finding existing knowledge from a different domain are described but as yet there appears to be no tool for allowing building designers to access the efficient ways found in nature of producing energy, using energy, and recycling resources. Considering energy efficiency as one of the aspects of sustainability in the concept of bio-inspired building design, the problem was how to access the solutions best matched to the design problem.

Design inspired by nature has been known as biomimicry or biomimetic design that is believed to transform human technologies into a sustainable status through translation of biological models, systems, and processes.

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