How can processes taking place regularly in nature effect and influence architectural design? This may seem like an odd question to ask, but it’s the one question that is key to the study of biomimicry and how it can be used to create sustainable solutions.
Looking at how nature functions can aid architects in their design process
Rendering of treehouse competition entry that includes biomimetic features such as automatic humidity sensors that inform inhabitants that rain is approaching and also close the roof panels. These are based on mechanisms of Hercules beetles and pine cones, respectively. (Image courtesy of Biomimicry Design Alliance.)
Biomimicry is looking at how biology works, and applying the lessons learned to human designs. By mimicking or emulating nature’s functions, these lessons can help create sustainable designs and solutions. “Biomimicry can help us design buildings that are energy efficient, that are healthier than a typical building, and also that fit in well within a given ecosystem,” explains Megan Schuknecht, senior biomimicry professional at the Biomimicry Institute, Missoula, Mont. “Buildings that emulate ecosystem functioning, such as reflecting light in deserts or managing stormwater during rainy seasons, is what architects should really be striving for.”
“Biomimicry is not just copying the form of nature, but it’s really looking into the strategies and mechanisms of a form, or a process, or a system, and then emulating it,” says Cynthia Fishman, AIA, BSpec, NCARB, LEED AP, ACUE, Fitwel Ambassador, founder and director at the Biomimicry Design Alliance LLC, Denver.
While the study of biomimicry dates back to the 1940s and the invention of Velcro, it wasn’t until 1997 when Janine Benyus wrote a book on the topic, “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature,” that it started to get widespread recognition.
Biomimicry Design Alliance partnered with AEC technology specialist MG to create a new company called Biomimicry Inventions. Our first collaboration is a patent-pending acoustical lattice. Based on the amazing abilities of the Cabbage Tree Emperor Moth, this product uses geometry instead of material characteristics in order to mitigate sound. (Image courtesy of Biomimicry Design Alliance.)
Three Essential Elements
Biomimicry is made up of three essential elements: emulate, ethos and reconnect. Emulate is the scientific, research-based practice of learning from and then replicating nature’s forms, processes and ecosystems to create more regenerative designs, ethos is the philosophy of understanding how life works and creating designs that continuously support and create conditions conducive to life, and reconnect is the concept that we are nature and find value in connecting to our place on Earth as part of life’s interconnected systems.
Simply stated, emulation is mimicking nature’s blueprints and forms, and ideally its systems. “With the emulation piece, we want to emulate not only individual functions, but also deeper patterns, such as sourcing resources locally or minimizing waste,” says Schuknecht. “Ethos is really about doing the right thing. What would nature do here in this place? How can I make this building not serve only human needs, but also serve the needs of the broader community that lives there, the community of species, or the ecosystem?”
“Reconnect is about being open to what nature has to teach us,” adds Schuknecht. “It’s about taking time to go out and experience the natural world, not as part of a sport, but with a willingness to just sit and observe. The reconnect piece is important because we want people to be awed by the natural world, and develop a respect for the natural world, so that they’ll want to protect it.”
An example of a possible application of the patent-pending acoustic lattice product, the results of a collaboration between the Biomimicry Design Alliance and AEC technology specialist MG. Based on the abilities of the Cabbage Tree Emperor Moth, this product uses geometry instead of material characteristics to mitigate sound. (Image courtesy of Biomimicry Design Alliance)
Reframing the Question
When it comes to designing with biomimicry in mind, Schuknecht says it’s worth spending time upfront trying to understand the problem you’re trying to solve and the context that you’re solving it in. “Understanding the most important criteria both for yourself and your clients, and then looking at where there are opportunities and possibilities,” she says.
Biomimicry in design is not just about the architects and the designers, but also engineers and biologists. “With architecture and design, you would start the design process by defining the problem, and the big thing about biomimicry is all about reframing the question,” Fishman says. “Instead of asking what you want your design to be, ask what do you want your design to do? And just by changing that verb, it completely opens up the design space to all of nature to figure out how nature to solve that problem.”
“What’s different about a biomimicry design process is the discovery phase, going out and discovering examples in nature that accomplish the same thing you’re trying to accomplish,” explains Schuknecht. “It’s a little bit of a back-and-forth process between inspiration and then maybe redefining functions or the problems you’re trying to solve, or finding a great example in nature that maybe doesn’t solve the problem that you set out to solve but you see a real opportunity to employ it in a building. And then really understanding how that phenomenon works in nature. And that’s where it can be a little bit tricky if you’re not a biologist. It helps to have biologists on your team if you’re an architect trying to employ some of this stuff.”
“Biomimicry promotes interdisciplinary collaboration because biomimicry straddles that line between art and science,” says Fishman. By creating bridges between the disciplines, everyone would be working for the greater good, and not in competition. “Everyone would be working in more of a cooperative, mutualistic relationship. And the concept of biomimicry really supports that because it’s necessary.”
To learn more about how to approach biomimicry in design, Fishman recommends using a tool called Life’s Principles, which is a set of 26 guidelines that 99.9% of the natural world follows. The guidelines act as a blueprint as to how the rest of the planet fits into the ecosystem. The 26 principles fall into six categories. One of them is to Use Life-Friendly Chemistry. “We as humans really like to use toxic chemicals; we use the entire periodic table of elements, whereas nature does everything with a small subset of those elements,” she explains.
“There is no waste in nature, everything is an input into another system.” The Life’s Principle category that directly applies to the design industry is Integrating Development with Growth. She says it’s not about getting bigger, but looking at how to make an infrastructure that simultaneously supports that growth in a balanced way.
“That’s really the big thing about biomimicry,” Fishman says. “Once you reframe that question into a function, then you can look to nature, figure out how nature solves that function, and then translate it from the language of biology into the language of design, so that it can become a concept that can be integrated into your project.”
Example of Life’s Principles being incorporated into an architectural design for a treehouse competition. (Image courtesy of Biomimicry Design Alliance)
Building Products
The types of building products used are also important. “One of the things we’d like to see is reduced toxicity in building, and our built environment still tends to use a lot of toxic products,” notes Schuknecht. Using products that don’t include elements that are on the Red List is a good starting point, but as Schuknecht says, we need to go even deeper than that and look at why we’re using toxic products at all.
While incorporating a biomimetic product into a building’s design is a way to utilize biomimicry, Fishman says that you also need to look at the product as a whole and not just the end result. “There’s the bigger picture of the products that you use,” she says. “To properly use biomimicry as a design lens, we need to look at the whole life cycle. And biomimicry is not just looking at the interior and exterior finishes, but also the systems within the building including energy, water use and even social aspects.”
An example of a biomimetic product are windows with glass that have a UV-patterned coating that isn’t visible to the human eye but is visible to birds to protect them from crashing into buildings. And with approximately a billion birds dying every year from crashing into windows, using this type of glass in buildings can have a big conservation impact. Other examples of biomimicry design innovations in buildings include lightweighting the entire structure based on lessons learned from how bird skeletons or trees distribute material where it’s needed most, but not in excess. Or a building that purifies its wastewater on-site, mimicking the way water purification occurs in place in nature.
Example of a multifamily project’s amenity space that used a social perspective of biomimicry to create programmatic elements that were site specific. The Life’s Principles that were used as a design lens allowed the design team to change a lounging area into a daycare and change the main lobby into a community greenhouse that would be maintained by the leasing agent. (Image courtesy of Biomimicry Design Alliance)
Future of Biomimicry
As a design discipline, Schuknecht says biomimicry really resonates with architects. “Architects like to design beautiful buildings that are also functional, and that’s what nature is all about. Beauty comes out of meeting function.”
For humans to start being regenerative and resilient, Fishman says we need to recognize that we are part of a much bigger system. “Right now, we have this perception of being isolated, that we’re separate from nature, so that whatever we do has little consequence on anything else. But everything is connected. By utilizing biomimicry and reconnecting with nature, you really get this whole new level of appreciation of how amazing the rest of the plant is, and how we can be stewards of the rest of the organisms, and in helping them survive and thrive, it also helps us. Because if we don’t reintegrate with the rest of nature and realize that our actions have a huge impact, our species will become extinct.”