“Biomimicry is the practice of developing sustainable technologies inspired by ideas from nature.” Janine Benyus is a biologist, writer, professor, conservationist and student. In 1997 when her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature came out it to inspired not just other biologists but engineers and designers as well. Filled enthusiasm for this topic Benyus could not fit everything she wanted to say on her TED talk yet was still very articulate and convincing.
To inspire us to follow nature’s footsteps, her TED talk in September 2005 disseminates the questions: How does life makes things? What should we ask (in the next ten years)? How does life make the most of things? and How does life make things disappear into systems? Construction, raw material extraction, processing, maximising material potential, energy efficiency and disposal are the design challenges that are faced in the development of a product. All these steps of product development link to the questions she asked.
Janine Benyus also shares a few big ideas from biology. These may be some things I can look back to when I run through my check-list when I’m in need of ideas or idea catalysts. The first idea is self-assembly. Look at how the mother of pearl is assembled. It is forming in sea water and is tougher than our ceramics. Imagine, she says, making ceramics in room temperature, dipping it into and out of a liquid and having it harden by evaporation. What if all our hard materials were made in the same process as crystallization? Carbon dioxide as feedstock is another idea using a resource that is abundant. We treat CO2 like its the plague but plants eat it up and make all kinds of great things out of it. They don’t see it as a risk as we do. We should find ways to use the garbage that we placed in the atmosphere. Solar transformation is another idea that Janine Benyus highly values from nature. It too is a way of harvesting the infinite amount of clean solar energy there is (in the day time). The power of shape is relevant whenever designers do form studies. Just go to the Nature Lab. Go to the Nature Lab. GO TO THE Nature Lab. The bumps along a whale’s flippers facilitate the way a whale maneuvers him or herself by minimising resistance underwater. If the same principle was applied to airplane wings, fuel can be saved and this could increase a plane’s efficiency by 32 percent. Shape on the surface of feathers in thin film creates colour without pigment. Lotus leaves are self-cleaning because of the texture on their surface. Lotusan is a company that makes paint that dries with a similar texture so that rainwater picks up dirt as it rolls off. Timed degradation is a distant dream we all have for the products that we make so lets look at how nature does it. Detritivors or decomposers digest and return dead matter to the soil. This is essentially a humble community of various mushrooms and earthworms. Benyus asks us to look at the threads that attach mussel shells to rocks and compares it with the potential of our packaging design. The threads start to dissolve after exactly two years after being formed.
The greatest lesson nature can teach us is that it takes care of the place our offspring will inhabit once we are gone. This is worth striving for so I will end with a quote from Okala:
We’re not inheriting this land from our ancestors
but borrowing it from our children– Native American proverb
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