December 2, 2008

Biomimicry

by Environmental Building Strategies in Green Building, Renewable Energy, Uncategorized Tags: Biomimicry, Green Building 1,025 Comments

“Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a design discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf.” Ideas that come from this concept are being discussed in green building circles around the world.

Stemming from life’s principles, biomimicry is a tool that seeks to optimize rather than maximize, to use benign manufactured materials, things that nature has been doing for a long time. Rather than wasting materials, nature focuses on reusing everything in a very cyclical process. In fact, you may notice that nothing in the natural world comes with a 90 degree angle. Much of it is seen in spirals. One company uses these spirals inspired by seashells and rams’ horns to create highly efficient fan blades. The Biomimicry Institute recently teamed with Autodesk.org to launch AskNature, a website revealing some of nature’s wonders and ways it can be mimicked. It is a tool for an array of people, from biologists to designers, architects to chemists.

You can learn much more about biomimicry at AskNature. Some things applicable to residential green building include the following:

- Interface: “The organized chaos of a blanket of fall leaves inspired InterfaceFLOR designers to create Entropy, a line of carpet tiles with a random pattern. This randomness means that when any tile gets worn, it can be quickly replaced without worrying about mismatching dyes or patterns. This reduces waste and manufacturing costs. Entropy is part of InterfaceFLOR’s i2 collection.”

- Lotusan Paint: “The wings of many large-winged insects such as butterflies and many plant surfaces remain dirt-free without chemical detergents or expending energy, simply by how their complex surface topography interacts with the physics of water molecules. Lotusan® exterior coating uses these same micro-structural principles to regain its cleanliness automatically after the mere rinse of a rain shower.”

There are many more examples on the website. Learn more about Biomimicry on our video page and hear firsthand from Janine Benyus, writer of Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature.