Introduction

The work of the BAUM program marked a turning point in the study of the links between urban morphology and biodiversity. Following the methodological synthesis in Notebook No. 7, another document deserves particular attention: BAUM Notebook No. 6, dedicated to the MORPHOBIOT project. Its contribution is considerable. It proposes a new way of observing the city: the “built-vegetation” unit. This combined reading of the mineral and the living opens a perspective that classical metrics—vegetated areas, densities, ratios—had never allowed us to explore.

1. MORPHOBIOT: an exploration of the built-plant relationship

The project studies five urban forms in Toulouse (19th-century suburb, detached housing, large housing estate, workers' garden city, eco-district) to understand "their capacity to accommodate and maintain biodiversity in an urban environment." It is a work of rare precision, where architecture, vegetation, uses, and birdlife are analyzed simultaneously.

2. A methodological innovation: “built-vegetal forms”

MORPHOBIOT resulted in the formalization of 18 typologies of “built-plant forms”. These are the result of a complex transdisciplinary process:

• building surveys (materials, footprints, architectural characteristics),
• detailed surveys of plant strata (herbaceous, shrubby, arboreal, bushy, liana),
• analysis of sociotopes (management, uses, accessibility),
• birdlife inventories.

On pages 19–21, the Notebook describes this work as "a consideration of living things as fine as the built environment is usually considered in urban planning documents".

This approach produces an original framework for interpretation: the encounter between built form and plant form is an autonomous ecological unit.

3. Why this unit changes everything

Traditional metrics (percentage of vegetation, waterproofing, building height, density) only capture part of the phenomenon. The "building-vegetation" unit reveals that:

• Two neighborhoods with equivalent vegetation can support two completely different ecologies;
• The history of buildings and that of vegetation co-evolve and determine current ecological dynamics;
• Spatial structure is just as important as quantity.

This point confirms an observation already made in the summary of Notebook No. 7: quantitative approaches only explain a fraction of the ecological signal.

4. A rare contribution: the representation of both living things and buildings

One of the most striking passages in Notebook No. 6 is the difficulty, but also the necessity, of representing vegetation and its functions "as finely as buildings are usually represented in urban planning documents".

This is a structural weakness in planning:

• the building is documented, measured, described;
• Living things are approximated, aggregated, schematized.

MORPHOBIOT offers a method to overcome this asymmetry.

5. Taking into account uses, management and the sociotope

The project clearly shows that urban biodiversity also depends on:

• management systems,
• regarding the opening or closing of spaces,
• human uses,
• maintenance practices.

Biodiversity is not just a state of affairs: it is a living interaction between inhabitants, managers and environments.

This dimension aligns with Effinature's ecological management principles, which explicitly incorporate:

• management practices,
• the temporal evolution of the site,
• the impact of human use.

6. What MORPHOBIOT brings to the certification process

The lessons from Notebook No. 6 confirm three structuring requirements:

1. A reference framework must make the built-vegetation coherence legible.

That's the role:

• of the harmonized CBS,
• of the IVS,
• from the ecological plant palette,
• functional layers.

2. A reference framework must integrate uses and management.

Effinature formalizes this dimension precisely (ecological management, sustainability, integration of uses into ecological pathways).

3. A reference framework must be independent and evidence-based.

The methodological difficulties described in BAUM (bias, confounding factors, site selection) are precisely the reasons why an independent evaluation is essential.

Conclusion

BAUM Notebook No. 6 demonstrates that urban biodiversity cannot be understood or assessed using traditional tools. By proposing a new ecological unit—built-vegetation forms—MORPHOBIOT opens up a major new perspective: analyzing the city through the interplay between the mineral and the living. Evidence-based frameworks now have the task of transforming this conceptual advancement into operational requirements. This is one of IRICE's roles: to guarantee the consistency, reproducibility, and reliability of ecological approaches applied to real estate projects.

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