My first exposure to Biomimicry I remember was visiting the Eden Center in Cornwall, UK in 2014. The buildings at this restored gravel pit look similar to geodesic domes, but are built to mimic soap bubbles, insulating the buildings and providing light weight material to sit on the unstable sands of the building site. The architect, Jolyon Brewis, used the mathematical formulas of spirals of pinecones, pineapples and sunflowers to create these strong, durable structures that let light in but insulate well. This design from nature intrigued me, but biomimicry didn’t crystalize in my mind until we visited Barcelona this year and learned about the work of Antoni Gaudi. We saw his amazing cathedral, Sagrada Familia, started in 1883 and due to be finally finished in 2024, as well as the Park Guell, and various other homes and buildings. In his later work Gaudi drew inspiration from nature, both for the decorative elements of the buildings and for design. He studied the structure of trees, rushes, reeds and bones to add strength to the beams holding up the roof of Sagrada Familia and copying the fractal structures found in nature, he gave his columns double-turn helicoidal shape adding strength. His study of nature’s forms resulted in other forms such as cones, the hyperbolic paraboloid and others. But it was his way of decorating these structures that really captured me. Covering much of the roofs and building are his broken tiles, Trencadis, in which he used recycled tiles, buttons, shells and even bits of old pottery brought by the workers, he added a wonderful, organic feel to his structures. Not straight and flat, but rolling, undulating surfaces that seem almost alive. Natural images of animals and plants are everywhere. I came away amazed that this man, over 100 years ago, was already utilizing biomimicry. It inspired me to go look for contemporary examples and I found them everywhere.
Biomimicry describes the process of humans borrowing designs and systems from nature to create their own technology. It is literally the imitation or mimicking of the elements of nature for the purpose of solving human problems. One of bioimicry’s major advocates, Jan Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute, says that biomimicry is observing how life has learned over millions of years to take care of her offspring and we must now learn from nature how to take care of our offspring. Biomimicry imitates natural systems that employ negative feedback loops, reusing, recycling, receiving and giving back. These systems of design and production of materials, structures and even social structures and communities are modeled on biological entities and processes. She says in one podcast that we need to learn to be “Earthlings”, creatures of the earth, not separate from it. Our current way of doing things, she would describe as a “death culture”, extracting, receiving, using and never regenerating. That has to change and biomimicry is one good tool to use. Nature has been perfecting it’s systems for a long time and humans can learn from it’s designs. We have millions of ancestors in nature, and therefore, millions of teachers. Nature can be our mentor.
Humans have, of course, always done this. Leonardo da Vinci studied the flight of birds and made attempts to develop flying machines. The Wright brothers studied the flight of pigeons in their early designs of planes. Buckminster Fuller, who the Eden Project copied, mimicked the structure of trees in his design of the modern home, hanging all the structures on a central stem or backbone. It didn’t catch on. In the 1950’s, the American biophysicist, Otto Schmitt developed the Schmitt Trigger by studying the nerves of squids. In his continued study of natural systems he coined the word, biomimetics. Even Henry Ford, who insisted that his parts be delivered in crates whose boards he could use as Model T components, was recycling and reusing in what we now see as biomimicry.
Biomimicry is gradually becoming a mainstream design method. In an effort to decrease water usage at the Great Sand Dunes State Park in Colorado, designers asked what does nature do? Struggling to find a new system, they suddenly realized that nature doesn’t go up on the dunes in the hottest part of the day. A nature based strategy is to discourage human exploration during those hours and open earlier and later. Biomimicry doesn’t have to be complicated. Janine Benyus is excited about 3-D printing as way of utilizing recycled plastic. Agriculture, forestry and greenhouse growing all benefit from studying the way nature does it. Such systems are by definition regenerative. Researchers studied the termite’s ability to maintain constant temperature and humidity in their termite mounds in Africa despite outside temperatures that vary from 35 to 104 °F. They scanned a termite mound and created 3-D images of the mound structure resulting in construction techniques that will help with insulation.
The Biomimicry Institute has started the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge. I recommend looking it up. In 2018, there were six teams recognized for their designs. A team in China worked to develop a way to combat soil erosion resulting from the Three Gorges Dam. They mimicked the Kingfisher’s “third eyelid”, a protective layer that a covers the bird’s eyes while under water. Their design is a mesh structure that covers soil while it is submerged and water is rushing over it. Another team at Georgia Tech were looking to find resilient ways to harvest renewable energy. They designed a generator that produces clean energy from underwater sea currents. They studied the bell-shaped bodies of jellyfish, how schools of fish position themselves in currents, how heart valves move liquid and kelp blades adapt to flowing water to develop their generator. Another team generated energy on urban freeways copying cockroach shells, condor wings and the structure of desert snail shells.
These are just a few examples of biomimicry that I am beginning to see everywhere I look. I am sharing this to encourage everyone to watch for this, and use it in your own problem solving, but mainly I share because this is something that gives me hope. According to these biomimicry design folks, all the answers we need in order to survive as a species and regenerate the Earth can be found in biomimicry. It is up to us to discover them. We’ve just been going about it in the wrong way, thinking of humans as smarter than nature and independent. It’s a new way, or rather, a very old way of thinking.
Janine Benyus would say that “What do you want?” Is the wrong question. The right questions are “What do you want your design to do?” and “How does nature do it?”.
Ask Nature.