Biomimicry: Design Inspired By Nature

It certainly is an interesting time to be alive. While there is a lot of bad news these days, there is also a lot of very promising news as well. People, individuals and collective bodies, all across the world are responding to the numerous challenges we face as a species-global warming, peak oil, water and food shortages, mass extinction of species, etc. by rethinking every aspect of how we organize ourselves and operate at every level society.

One such promising concept and design practice is biomimicry, called bionics in Europe, is design inspired by nature. According to the Biomimicry Institute website the term, from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate, represents a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.

Also as outlined on the Institutes's website:

The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils and what surrounds use is the secret to survival.

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Janine Benyus (You Tube video of her giving a lecture on 12 Sustainable Design Ideas), author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature writes that a biomimetic revolution has the potential to change the way we grow food, make materials, harness energy, heal ourselves, store information, and conduct business by nature acting as model, measure and mentor. The Biomimicry Institutes's website outlines each of these as follows:

Nature as model. We would manufacture the way animals and plants do, using sun and simple compounds to produce totally biodegradable fibers, ceramics, plastics, and chemicals.

Nature as measure. Beside providing the model, nature would also provide the measure-we look to nature as a standard against to judge the ‘rightness' of our innovations. Are they life promoting? Do they fit in? Will they last?

Nature as mentor. Biomimicry is a new way to viewing and valuing nature. It introduces and era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but what we can learn from it.

In her book and on the Institutes's website, she outlines several examples of biomimicry pioneers in action. Here is a sample of those pioneers with what their research:

• Wes Jackson (The Land Institute) is studying prairies as a model for an agriculture that features edible, perennial polycultures and that would sustain, rather than strain, the land.
• Thomas and Ana Moore and Devins Gust ( University of Arizona) are studying how a leaf captures energy, in hopes of making a molecular-sized solar cell. Their light-sensitive "pentad" mimics a photosynthetic reaction center, creating a tiny, sun-powered battery.
• J. Herbert Waite ( University of California Santa Barbara) is studying the blue mussel, which attaches itself to rocks via an adhesive that can do what ours can't-cure and stick underwater. Various teams are attempting to mimic this underwater glue.
• Peter Steinberg (Biosignal) has created an anti-bacterial compound that mimics the sea purse. These red algae keeps bacteria from landing on surfaces by jamming their communication signals with an environmentally friendly compound called furanone.
• Bruce Roser (Cambridge Biostability) has developed a heat-stable vaccine storage that eliminates the need for costly refrigeration. The process is based on a natural process that enables the resurrection plant to remain in a desiccated state for years.

I have barely scratched the surface of this promising design model. Thus, I encourage you to read this landmark book and/or check out the Institute's website. Another interesting read on this topic is Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Biomimicry offers a much needed solution to making design and manufacturing sustainable which is an absolute must for a healthy, just, prosperous, and sustainable future.

"The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone."

~ Janine Benyus

Essay by Denise Frizzell. For more musing from Denise, visit, www.paradigms4progress.com.