Mimicking Nature

Excerpt from full article @ Planet Ark, 7 August 2009

'At first glance, a humpback whale and a wind turbine don't have a lot in common. For that matter, neither do a shellfish and a sheet of plywood. But both sea creatures are the inspiration behind products designed using biomimicry, or looking to nature's designs and processes to solve human problems.

For those who know where to look, biomimetically inspired products can be found in almost every corner of the marketplace, from medicine to transportation. But where the emerging field has the potential for the greatest impacts, according to advocates and practitioners, is in changing the way we think about our built environment - not only in designing individual building products, but in conceiving of entire communities as biomimetic systems, not to mention businesses, government bodies and other "systems."

The launch of the Biomimicry Venture Group in 2008 by Paul Hawken and Janine Benyus, a naturalist and writer whose 1997 book, "Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature," defined the concept, could help seed the concept even deeper into the marketplace. And the recent launch of AskNature.org, a biomimicry encyclopedia for designers backed by industry giant Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK), shows the evolution of the biomimicry movement within the design industry...

AskNature.org, launched in late 2008 by both Autodesk and the Biomimicry Institute, is part social network, part library. The site matches nature's solutions to design problems, and lists ways such concepts could be applied to the human-built environment...

One of the most spectacular examples, the Swiss Re Building in London models the structure of a sea sponge: Gaps in each floor create shafts that naturally ventilate the entire building. Designed by Lord Norman Foster with Arup engineers, the building was designed to use half the energy of a typical building...

"We can't solve challenges by throwing a set of interesting technologies at them. ... I think that process is going to be as, if not more, important," Benyus says. "Problems in sustainability are all connected, we cannot solve one without solving them all-we've got a system of problems and it will take a system of solutions."

One way this could happen is through using biomimicry to design entire communities. "Making a bio-inspired product is one thing; making a bio-inspired city begins to change the world," Benyus said in a statement....

The Biomimicry Institute offers curriculum for K-12 and university students. And in 2010, the institute is graduating its first cohort of 16 practitioners in its Certificate in Biomimicry program, a two-year course of study to train professionals from a range of fields in biomimicry. Intended to be comparable to a Masters degree, the certificate program targets students with backgrounds in biology, business, building and engineering. Upon completion of the program, graduates should be equipped to start their own consultancies and bring biomimicry to existing companies and organizations.'