Biomimicry, Sensible Approach To Sustain

Use The Nature..

Nature is you. Nature is around you. About 4.54 billion years old Nature is our greatest teacher .., Nature runs on Sunlight. She is beautiful. She is sustainable. She is ours. She is vast and diverse. And “The examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve our(human) problems” is Biomimicry.

Biomimicry- 

Looking at Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor

[From the Greek bios, life, and mimesis, imitation]

1. Nature as Model. Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf

2. Nature as Measure. Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the “rightness” of our innovations. After 3.8 million years of evolution, nature has learned: what works. What is appropriate? What lasts?

3. Nature as Mentor. Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.

The most familiar early example is human flight. The inspiration from birds thought the human to fly. And the observation of pigeons in flight was helped in mimicking the design of ‘pigeon in flight’ to human flight.

Burdock burr were the source of inspiration for George de Mestral – the Swiss engineer who noticed the way that burdock burrs clung to his dog’s coat and, after studying them with a magnifying glass, designed Velcro, Apparently Zip.

 

Pax Technologies took the calla lily's shape as inspiration for a water mixer. The flower's centripetal spirals assist with the ideal flow of liquid, which allows their design to mix more liquid with a fraction of the horse power usually required. Using nature's perfected designs helps minimize energy requirements.

Qualcomm company looked towards the unique properties of butterfly wings to improve display technology. These highly developed structures reflect light so that specific wavelengths interfere with each other to create bright colors. This same principle was applied to cutting-edge display technology to make brighter, more readable, lower-power displays in mobile devices.

The high-rise Eastgate Centre building in Harare, Zimbabwe was designed to mimic the way that those tower-building termites in Africa construct their mounds to maintain a constant temperature. The insects do this by constantly opening and closing vents throughout the mound to manage convection currents of air - cooler air is drawn in from open lower sections while hot air escapes through chimneys. The innovative building uses similar design and air circulation planning while consuming less than 10% of the energy used in similar sized conventional buildings!

Mercedes-Benz looked towards the boxfish for their bionic car concept. Noting the aerodynamics and efficiency of the boxfish's shape, the engineers decided to apply the characteristics of the fish to a car. The result is a very streamlined vehicle with a 65% lower drag coefficient than other compact cars out at the time (2005).

The architecture firm ‘Mad Architects’ is the designer of fake hills, a housing society that takes the shape of hills, and is aimed to be part of the city of Beihei. The buildings have undulated roofs and cuts that maximize the view of the dwellers. The design draws inspiration from nature when it comes to sustainability. The shape of the building allows automatic cleaning of the air.

Sunlight filters through the structure naturally, making the building energy efficient without the use of electricity.

                The Nose-cone of a Japanese 500-series Shinkangen bullet train is modeled after a Kingfisher’s beak.                                             

Cleaning wastes in a building using bio-mimetic principles is also becoming more common. Ecological waste treatment systems are available that recreate wetland ecosystems using microorganisms and plants to purify wastewater from toilets or other industrial uses. In the ecological waste treatment system, the effluent is moved by gravity from tank to tank, each a complete and increasingly complex ecosystem, where it is attacked and consumed by microorganisms. Unlike conventional waste treatment systems, which use great amounts of energy and harsh chemicals, ecological waste treatment systems use only sunlight, bacteria and plants to clean water.

In nature, it is important to remember that there is no such thing as waste because everything in the nature is recycled. Only mankind creates things that not recycled, useless to all other forms of life. And due to that the earth is suffering from global warming, the living beings are suffering from climatic changes. We need to stop all this…to do that just mimic the sustainable nature to sustainable design of structure, machine, product etc. Of course, many scientists, architects, engineers, and other designers are now roaming in fields and woods to find solutions for their respective designs..

“we must draw our standards from the natural world. We must honor with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence”     

 -VACLAV HAVEL.

The new trend, Biomimicry could be the future of sustainability.

 -Sasidhar Reddy M,

                          architect.sasidhar@gmail.com

                        *blog was done in 2013

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