Sustainable Architecture Arch 249Prof. O’Riordan

Biomimicry: Conscious Emulation of Nature’s Genius

One of the most fascinating new fields of the 21st century

curiously happens to be one of the most worlds most ancient.

Biomimicry, or the imitation of models and systems of nature,

looks to the world’s oldest available knowledge. Leap-frogging

off 3.85 billion years of evolutionary ‘Research & Design’, the

science is responsible for introducing astounding breakthroughs

in manufacturing and industry by adopting elements of biological

design. Biomimetic designs are particularly remarkable in that

the solutions they offer are effective as well as sustainable.

‘Whenever you see a structure in nature, you can assume there is wisdom in it’

explains Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild and

the Biomimetic Institute. The mantra has directed the attentions

of engineers, designers, inventors and architects away from

‘Heat, Beat, and Treat’ research labs. Instead, it has galvanized

thinkers with a surprisingly basic question: How has nature

solved this problem? In the field of architecture, biomimetic

research has had a very visible effect. From skyscrapers modeled

after deep-sea sponges to Saharan reserves designed around the

scalloped surfaces of beetle husks, natural solutions have

drastically influenced architecture by re-organizing design

around principles of biological form and function.

History

Biomimicry is a survival strategy for the human race, a path to a 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

Humans have modeled after nature since the beginning of

recorded history. Arctic Inuit tribes were known for having

modeled their heat retentive igloos after the dens of polar

bears. In the San Jose Valley, indian tribes modeled their below

ground adobe homes after the thermo-regulated dens of the

Colombian Ground Squirrel. Even household name innovators

Leonardi DaVinci, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers

credit nature as inspiration for their ideas.

The more recent Biomimicry movement arrived as an

afterthought of the green movements of the 60’s and 70’s. It

achieved relative validity in academia thanks to the momentum of

Montana biologists Janine Benyus and Dayna Baumeister. The two

recognized an overarching theme in sustainable initiatives like

zoopharmacognosy1, the biomimetic materials industry, and Natural

Systems Agriculture2. Benyus and Baumeister co-founded the

Biomimicry Institute, a for-profit consulting and design firm

that collaborates with industry manufacturers.

The dispersion of Biomimicry principles has seen a variety

of innovative technologies unfold: gas-efficient cars designed

after fish to reduce drag, surfacing modeled after the bacteria

resistant ridges of sharkskin, and paint coatings that mimic the

bumpy texture of the lotus flower, allowing them to self-clean in

rain. At its core, the movement encourages a re-organization of

our value of knowledge: biomimicry offers lucrative rewards to

those designers who embrace a progressive, humble approach to

1 The behavior by which animals self-medicate i.e. a bird eating clay to remove toxins from it’s alimentation.2 A science that replicated the soil-rejuvenating properties of prairies by planting varieties of poly-cultures and perennials rather than soil-depleting annuals.

their respective craft rather than those who design for

convention’s sake.

As figureheads of an emerging discipline, Benyus and

Baumeister have had a shaping influence on developing a respected

educational culture around biomimicry. Chief among these has been

the website Biomimicry.net, an online institute that has

organized and funneled biomimetic research into a useable

database. The two are also responsible for introducing biomimicry

into academic institutions; already, majors and minors in

biomimicry are offered at institutions like Arizona State

University and Minneapolis College of Art & Design. As well, the

Biomimicry Institute has served as a consulting platform for

companies such as Boeing, Burt’s Bees, HOK architects, and

General Electric.

The Biologist’s Approach

“Human ingenuity may make various inventions…but it will never devise any

inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does;

because in her inventions nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous”- Leonardo

Da Vinci

Understanding the process of biomimetic design is the

essential step to productive innovation. Beyond the broad

question of how does nature design, are necessary questions of

specificity. At the most basic level, how does a specific

organism do something? Asking how a seagull drinks saltwater

would lead to the discovery of a nasal salt gland that helps to

regulate the ionic balance of the blood. Next would be to

question how that particular design facilitates the organism’s

interaction with the overall system, in the case of a seagull,

with a coastline ecosystem. On a larger scale, that understanding

can be used to correlate patterns with other organisms and their

ecosystems and to derive principles of evolutionary design. The

basic concepts a designer might strive to emulate from nature are

that of form, process and ecosystem.

Form, most simply, refers to a specific, tangible structure.

While form is not the only concept biomimics take, it tends to

make up a large majority of biomimicry innovations. At a basic

level, form is always what allows for process, and transitively,

ecosystems. The framework for form mimicry considers how shape,

surface and texture allow for a process or property. In

architectural design, a poignant example of form is an interior

surfacing agent branded Sharklet®. Sharklet produces a wall and

flooring surface that mimics the rough texture of sharkskin. Due

to a sea of microscopic ridges, a shark’s skin is largely

uninhabitable for bacterial cultures; in this instance, nature

creates an antibacterial surface by structure rather than via the

addition of chemical agents. The concept of such a technology

makes sense for reducing the transmission of contagious diseases

in nurseries or hospitals, where sicknesses are already present

and infection can be lethal.

Biomimics also strive to replicate larger processes

accomplished by natural organisms, i.e. chemical reactions like

de-salination or photosynthesis. While sustainable architecture

may seem to be more clearly linked to emulating biological forms,

like an anti-bacterial surface or a thermo regulated termite

mound, understanding the processes of nature can lead to re-

thinking human design to startling results. One such instance

would be the process by which the Blue Mussel sticks to rock

surfaces by creating a waterproof adhesive from a series of amino

acids. Emulating this is, by way of a soy protein analog, is a

product called Purbond®, which is now competing with commonplace

formaldehyde based glues, which are inherently toxic, for use in

bonding plywood and OSB paneling.

Optimistically, architectural grid planning can even

replicate ecosystems. In nature, we could define an ecosystem as

a network of both living and non-living components operating in

an ongoing cycle. As a rule of thumb, ecosystems can teach a

long-standing formula for co-operative survival. On the contrary,

we can also learn from extinct ecosystems what formulas are un-

conducive to life. Natural or not, human development has

introduced all sorts of architecture into natural ecosystems,

most of them not co-operatively. That we have yet to understand

better ways to integrate our building is indisputable. While far

in the future of biomimetic architecture, eco-systemic biomimicry

has been considered by innovators like Michael Pawlyn in his

Mobius Project (mentioned later) and designer John Todd, whose

Eco-Machines replicate wetland water treatment with a zero-

discharge wastewater treatment system by way of plants and micro-

organisms.

Case Study: Coral, Cement, and Calcium Carbonate

One interesting example of architecture’s intersection with

biomimicry has resulted in a potentially hyper-effective solution

for providing sustainable building materials while actually

sequestering greenhouse gases. The idea was originally inspired

by coral polyps, who create intricate homes of coral primarily

from calcium and carbon dioxide from seawater. Arguably, humans

have created ‘exoskeletons’ similar in principle to those of the

polyps. Many of our buildings, particularly our skyscrapers, are

made of concrete: a mixture of gravel and cement. Unfortunately,

cement, which comes mainly from limestone, is difficult to

harvest, requiring machinery and disruptive excavation of

sedimentary rock beds in the earth’s crust. Notably, Limestone is

rich in calcium carbonate. The process of turning concrete into a

viable building block is a process anchored in the ‘Heat, Beat,

and Treat’ philosophy of design: we mine over 39 billion tons of

limestone each year, and the process of cooking the limestone is

accountable for 5-6% of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

What if we emulated the

coral polyps, and created our

building materials sustainably? If the polyps can make the same

calcium carbonate building blocks with none of the environmental

impact, then an opportunity exists to learn from them. The recipe

of the polyp is one being studied now by a company called Calera,

which specializes in innovative designs for sequestering carbon

dioxide from the atmosphere. In development now is a process by

which carbon emissions from smokestacks might be sequestered into

calcium carbonate and then re-used in the building process. It is

a process that could have huge payback in the industrial world,

and the small coral polyp inspired it.

Case Study: The Mobius Project (Concept, Central London)

“ In ecosystems, waste from one organism becomes the nutrient for another,

turning a big problem into a huge opportunity, so why don’t we look at something like

the metabolism of a city?” – Michael Pawlyn

It is not beyond the scope of architecture to institute

biomimicry on an eco-systemic scale. Visionary architects like

Michael Pawlyn have already

tested the waters of such an

ambitious endeavor. His

Proposed design for The Mobius project at a roundabout in Central

landmark project, The Mobius Project, is a small-scale

imagination of eco-systemic biomimicry design as a solution to

the problem of urban waste. Inspired by nature’s principle of

waste reuse, Pawlyn’s building houses a variety of facilities, a

restaurant, fish-farm, water-treatment system, and coffee-shop

among them, all of which depend on a closed, waste-dependent

energy loop. Within the greenhouse, the concept entails an open

restaurant funneling its biodegradable waste (as well as waste

from the local area) into an anaerobic digester to create heat

(for the greenhouse) and electricity (to feed back to the grid).

The greenhouse would also host a water treatment facility based

around plant and microorganism filtration (to produce fresh

water) and a fish-farm fed from vegetable waste from the

restaurant kitchen and worms from the greenhouse compost (which

would then supply fish back to the restaurant). Finally, the

building also houses a coffee shop, from which the waste grains

would be reused as a substrate for growing mushrooms. In its

entirety, the Mobius project weds cycles of food, energy, water

and waste under one roof. Facilitating these cycles through

architecture allows the process to be interactive, consolidated,

and accessible to the public. The Mobius Project is a perfect

example of architecture that could ‘think’ on a systemic level.

Case Study: The Sahara Forest Project (Doha, Qatar)

“As I see it, this is the age in which we have the knowledge, technology and

imperative to formulate a truly sustainable way of living rather than pursuing

approaches that simply mitigate negative impacts”- Michael Pawlyn.

In recent years,

Pawlyn has become

famous in the

architectural world for

working on The Eden

Project in Cornwall,

England, and the progressive Sahara Forest Project in Qatar. Both

projects have been defined by their ambition to establish a co-

operative relationship with their respective eco-system. The

Sahara Forest Project, in particular, embodies a key principle of

natural design: rejuvenation. Natural eco-systems regularly do

this. For example, the metabolic processes of mangrove trees

An aerial view of the Sahara Forest Project in Doha, Qatar

release a wastes run-off food source for saltwater life organisms

living beneath their roots.

Michael Pawlyn’s seawater greenhouses provide a similar

restorative function. The greenhouses are designed after the

Namibian Fog-Basking beetle,

which uses its waxy hydrophilic

shell to collect evaporated water

from prevailing coastal winds.

Thanks to the climate-specific

design of it’s black shell, each morning this desert beetle

successfully ‘drinks’ from the air.

The coastal-facing walls of Pawlyn’s greenhouses employ

evaporator grills to the same

effect. The greenhouse receives air from the sea breeze winds,

containing it in a humid state in order to promote efficient

plant growth. That humidity is then condensed into freshwater,

effectively turning seawater, not conducive to vegetative life,

into much needed fresh water. Pawlyn calls this restorative

design.

A Namibian Fog-Basking Beetle with water droplets collecting on it’s shell.

After supplying more than

enough water to sustain plants in

the greenhouse, the facility

began to ‘hydrate’ the

surrounding desert with the

excess water. A year after completion, the area surrounding the

greenhouse is a spreading inkblot of vegetation in an arid

desert, and a testament to how progressive biomimicry design can

have a profound influence on how we choose to shape our world.

Conclusion

The field of biomimicry offers time-tested solutions in all

fields of design; in the field of architecture, it simply awaits

to be introduced as commercially viable. As an emerging

discipline, biomimetic architecture will depend upon 21st century

pilot projects to prove their worth. If the Sahara Forest Project

continues to bring restorative vegetation to the Sahara, if

Calera cement can successfully sequester carbon from greenhouse

gases, and if concepts like the Mobius Project inspire building

with ecosystems in mind, then we can be sure to see the wise

designing mind of nature influencing our building principles for

years to come. Nature has provided for us a veritable playbook of

ideas to work into human building. For strong, resource-efficient

design we need look no further than the lightweight abalone

shell, or the passively thermo-regulated termite mounds that

manage to have minimal temperature fluctuation despite their

tropical environments. The advent of biomimicry turns a new leaf

in the sustainable architecture movement. Consciously emulating

nature’s genius, we can incorporate designs that will allow us to

co-operatively exist with the natural ecosystem, rather than only

designing to mitigate destructive impact. Biomimicry, in all

fields of design, is a vessel for the message that sustainability

does not have to be burdened by an overarching concept of

restraint but rather lightened by the exciting prospect that we

design, and transitively exist, as nature does. In our thinking,

it is a grand flip of the switch, but an essential one if human

society ever intends to be sold on sustainability.

Lightly-Annotated Bibliography:Key:Source topic in ItalicsCitations below

1. Natural Systems Agriculture:The Land Institute  ." Natural Systems Agriculture. N.p., 04 Dec. 2013.Web. 04 Dec. 2013.

2: Janine Benyus’ “The Inception of Biomimicry”:

The Inception of Biomimicry - Janine Benyus." YouTube. YouTube, 04 June 2012. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.

3. Dayna Baumeister’s UMich presentation on Biomimicry:Dayna Baumeister - Nature as Industry: The Role of Biomimicry in the New Green Economy." YouTube. YouTube, 24 Aug. 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.

4. Gherkin Building:"30 St Mary Axe". Emporis. Retrieved 4 February 2010.

5. Eastman Complex – Termite inspired building in ZimbabweHow Termites Inspired Mick Pearce's Green Buildings." GreenBiz.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.

6. Purbond Resource - Columbia Forest Products : North America's Largest Manufacturer of Hardwood Plywood and Veneer." Columbia Forest Products : North America's Largest Manufacturer of Hardwood Plywood and Veneer. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013

7. Biomimicry: Learning From Nature – Presentation Notes." Biomimicry Education Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013

8. Michael Pawlyn: Using Nature's Genius in Architecture." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013

9. About Eco-Machines." JTED:. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013

10. Welcome to Calera." Welcome to Calera. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013

11. Picture Id: 1156870." 1156870. Fog Basking Beetle or Darkling Beetle (Onymacris Unguicularis) Drinking, Namib Desert, Namibia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.

12. Latest News." CarbonCure Makes Concrete Go Green 'without Compromise' N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013