Learning from nature, a master craftsmen, that has been evolving for millions of years, we can create efficient, living buildings, learn to use sunlight and recycle energy, reduce pollution and be in tune with our environment!
From the Greek bios, life, and mimesis, imitation comes the word-biomimicry ( Image courtesy: inhabitat.com )
By looking upon nature as a role model, a sustainable measure and a mentor, we can reshape our thinking, and find innovative answers to many problems. By valuing nature’s models and imitating them; designers today are beginning to shape buildings and design unconventional processes.
Nature has very specific ways for dealing with conservation during times of scarcity. Grass becomes dormant during droughts, birds conserve food. Animals and plants too have an intrinsic ability to monitor and self-regulate. Thinkers today are regrouping to find a way to learn and adapt from these natural phenomenon around them.
Water being a finite source, a biomimetic approach for encouraging responsible water usage can have a major impact. In urban water consumption nature can inspire relevant, everyday solutions for city inhabitants to conserve water. A New York-based team ‘Smart Design’ took up the IBM Biomimicry challenge and worked on this concept and come up with suggestions for water conservation, inspired from ecosystems.
How sensitivity to water consumption & conservation can be enhanced: IBM Biometric challenge ( Source: vimeo.com)
They created the Heartbeat Faucet, which provides feedback by pulsing after dispensing water. This metered pulse allows users to see and feel how much water they are using each time they turn on the faucet, informing everyone in the household about their behaviour. They also developed a program that would track the building's water and give a community reward, if water consumption came in below a set target.
Another nature inspired idea was the creation of MicroParks, tiny greenspaces throughout the city. The' MicroParks' water feed could be manipulated to reflect the cities future water supply--a lush MicroPark communicated a healthy water supply and a withering MicroPark let residents know that conservation is critical. These miniature green spaces act in a similar manner to rivers and streams , where one could see the physical condition of the water sources and connect with it, making behavior-changing connections in a positive way.
Buildings too need to be a living organism, where all systems are interconnected for maximum efficiency and minimum environmental impact. It should be compatible with the natural surroundings, harvest its water and energy needs on site, operate pollution free, be locally relevant and generate any waste that cannot be reused in the immediate environment.
Energy efficient catus inspired building in Qatar ( Courtesy:inhabitat.com)
In Qatar a new office building takes the form of a towering cactus, designed to be energy efficient and utilizing sun shades on its windows. Depending on the intensity of the sun during the day, the sun shades can open or close to keep out the heat. This is similar to how a cactus chooses to perform transpiration at night rather during the day in order to retain water – another great example of biomimicry.
Termite inspired office in Harare, Zimbabwe, with no air conditioning ( Courtesy: inhabitat.com)
Another wonderful example is a mid-rise building in Harare, Zimbabwe that has no air-conditioning, yet stays cool thanks to a termite-inspired ventilation system. It is modelled on the self-cooling mounds termites that maintain the temperature inside their nest to within one degree of 31 °C, day and night, while the external temperature varies between 3 °C and 42 °C. The building uses only 10 percent of the energy of a conventional building its size, and has saved 3.5 million in air conditioning costs in the first five years.
The more our world functions like the natural world, and we apply designs inspired from nature, the more likely we are to solve man made problems in a sustainable manner.
For more information on Biomimicry
What is Biomimicry? Click here
An example of application of Biomimicry, click here
A book on Biomimicry in Architecture, click here
Biomimetic Architecture, click here
