Biomimicry and Biomimetics
Forget the notion that technology improves upon nature.
Innovations, whether in farming, composite science, or computing, are a product of human creativity. Science writer Benyus uses these subjects and others to demonstrate how nature's solutions to situations have been the creative jumping-off points for individuals seeking solutions, developing, or simply revitalizing processes or products. The first seven chapters are a prelude to the final chapter, which tackles industrial ecology. Here, Benyus proposes "ten lessons" that an ecologically astute company, culture, or economy could practice to promote a healthier existence for us all.
Most of us see a gecko and think of ads for auto insurance, but this little lizard possesses a remarkable ability to climb walls and scamper across ceilings. Until recently, scientists couldn't figure out these Spider-Man–like powers as they dreamed of potential commercial uses. Now, according to British science writer Forbes, researchers have used the electron scanning microscope to crack the mysteries of many plants and animals—including the gecko—by studying them at the nano level. For example, studying the dirt-repellent surface of the lotus—an age-old symbol of purity in Asia, rising spotless out of muddy water—led to the invention of self-cleaning glass. Attempts to spin spider-quality silk for a wide range of purposes, including snagging jets as they land on aircraft carriers, have been less successful (one group used genetic engineering to try to create the basic elements of spider silk in goats' milk).
Fabrics that are not only stain resistant but actually clean themselves. Airplane wings that change shape in midair to take advantage of shifts in wind currents. Hypodermic needles that use tiny serrations to render injections virtually pain free.
Though they may sound like the stuff of science fiction, in fact such inventions represent only the most recent iterations of natural mechanisms that are billions of years old—the focus of the rapidly growing field of biomimetics. Based on the realization that natural selection has for countless eons been conducting trial-and-error experiments with the laws of physics, chemistry, material science, and engineering, biomimetics takes nature as its laboratory, looking to the most successful developments and strategies of an array of plants and animals as a source of technological innovation and ideas. Thus the lotus flower, with its waxy, water-resistant surface, gives us stainproofing; the feathers of raptors become transformable airplane wings; and the nerve-deadening serrations on a mosquito’s proboscis are adapted to hypodermics.
Biomimicry does not imitate nature, instead biomimicry learning from nature's designs and processes by imitating ideas. And It's a growing area of research in the fields of architecture and engineering due to the fact that it is an inspirational metaphor of possible new innovation and because of the potential it offers a way to create more sustainable and even regenerative built environment. The widespread and practical application of biomimicry as a design method remains largely unrealized.The various forms of biomimicry comply with building integration and its application to the building system; it is shown that these varieties of approaches may lead to attain different outcomes in terms of overall sustainability or regenerative potential. It is posited that a biomimetic approach to architectural design incorporates an understanding of integrating systems could become a path for creating a built environment and goes beyond simply sustaining conditions to a restorative practice where the built environment becomes a vital component in the integration to achieve maximum performances.
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