Week 1: What is Biomimicry?

Biomimicry is the art and science of taking influence from nature to innovate new ideas and designs to fuel our creations in a more efficient way. The importance of biomimicry comes from the fact that, in our world today, engineers are hoping to eliminate waste and create more sustainable designs for systems that are currently not working perfectly. Designers today should be looking for inspirations from natural organisms that have existed for thousands, even millions of years rather than synthetic objects that have existed for only a few decades.

As we become a greener society, nature’s influence will only become more appropriate in our quest for being clean, healthy and efficient with our products. We have built our way out of naturalistic forms only to become more harmful to the world around us, and now we have to learn to get back to that. The reason why biomimicry in technological design would maintain itself as being more sustainable is quite simple to understand: if plants and animals were surviving with these methods and “technologies” of their own before and not causing their environments harm, the how could you not take influence from that?

My own interest in biomimicry has not been long lived YET. I hadn’t known about it before learning of it and doing research on it. Everything about biomimicry makes sense me to and I feel that we as humans should take as much influence from natural forms as we possibly can. If we were to continue to synthesize our own harmful technologies in our world, we would be ruining our own chances of progressing our own species. If we are able to utilize the natural processes of the things around us rather than try to innovate our own, we will be more efficient in our work.

For my own work, I would choose to use it in the way I work with product design. Through trend research, I have found that some of the most appealing package design concepts are derived from natural forms and materials. With materials that are eco friendly and representational of natural forms, that is not only creating an effective design, but also opening consumer up to the prospects of biomimicry.

I have two pretty interesting examples that I have come up with through my research. The first example is how the Eiffel tower is directly influenced from the design of the top portion of the interior structure of the human femur. Images from here and here.

You can basically see the shape and form of the Eiffel Tower hanging upside down in the form of the joint of the femur.

My second example comes from the honeycomb shape of beeswax in a bee hive. Through the process of creating blinds that were ergonomically able to diffuse and keep light out efficiently, designers and scientists adapted the shape and form of the honeybee's honeycomb to keep light contained and properly diffused. Pictures from here and here.

Biomimicry is a fantastic way to innovate and create new ideas for effective designs. In a way it's an obvious solution to many design problems.

Mary N.