BIOMIMICRY


Butterfl y wings are inspiring the next generation of solar power


INSPIRED BY NATURE From creating breathable metals to copying how animals cool their homes,


architects and designers are increasingly using the principles of biomimicry in their work. Christopher DeWolf takes a look at how the discipline is evolving


W


hen Janine Benyus publ ished her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, in 1997, she expected it to


cause a stir in the academic world. She didn’t imagine it would help launch a movement that has reshaped the way many architects, designers and engineers approach their dis- ciplines. “It shocked me how much architects really responded to it,” she says by phone from her offi ce in Montana. Trained in natural resources management and English literature, Benyus has a gift for making complex ideas like biomimicry acces- sible. Simply put, she believes that human innovation should be inspired by nature, because nature works effi ciently and sus- tainably. “A truly biomimetic system solves more than one problem at a time,” she says.


50 CLADGLOBAL.COM


Nothing in nature works in isolation, yet the past 200 years of industrialisation and special- isation have led humans to take the opposite approach. “Biomimicry is useful in whole system thinking," she says. "Rather than being siloed, where you have the engineering folks here and the design folks there, they're sitting together and looking at something as if it has organic systems and it all works together."


A GROWING TREND


Janine Benyus popularised biomimicry with her 1997 book. She continues to work in the fi eld


Over the past decade, biomimicry has burrowed small but persistent roots into the foundation of architecture. Its greatest infl uence can be seen in small innovations with far-reaching implications. In the United States, architect David Benjamin is pioneering the fi eld of ‘mycotecture’ by creating struc- tures with fungal material. Last summer, he unveiled Hy-Fi at MoMa’s PS1 Gallery


CLADmag 2015 ISSUE 1


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