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BIOMIMICRY


If you want to make ceramics, the toughest ceramics are on the inside of abalone shells. You could farm abalones. Or you could see how abalones take seawater and self-assemble that amazing ceramic


ceramics are on the inside of abalone shells," she says. "You could farm abalones. Or you could see how abalones take seawater and self-assemble that amazing ceramic."


BIOMIMICRY THINKING By itself, there is nothing inherently sustaina- ble about biomimicry. That's why process, and not just material innovation, is so important. Shortly after publishing Biomimicry, Benyus was approached by companies that wanted to apply her ideas to their entire working systems. She founded a consultancy to cope with the demand, along with the not-for- profit Biomimicry Institute, which promotes


biomimetic ideas. "We've developed a method- ology that is pretty robust – we look at natural systems and pull out design principles from that," she says. Benyus calls the methodology “biomimicry thinking” and compares it to the recent emergence of "design thinking," which advocates a solution-based approach to prob- lem-solving, rather than an analytical one. Such thinking might lead some to recon- sider the very nature of architecture itself. Neri Oxman has been vocal in promoting a new kind of architecture based on natural principles, such as growth over assembly, integration over segregation and difference over repetition, which are now made easier


by digital fabrication technologies. "These technologies will enable us to create buildings that are entirely different than the ones that we inhabit today," she wrote last year. It may be possible to print concrete with the variable density of a human bone, she added, but that alone should not be the goal of biomimicry. "[It] is not a matter of pouring 'new wine into old wineskins' but of reconceiving the entire quest for creating habitat and expressing form." l


Christopher DeWolf is an architecture journalist and photographer based in Hong Kong


BIOMIMETIC MATERIALS


François Barthelat and his team at McGill University are working to recreate the structure of nacre


How do animals cool the air? Ask Nature. That’s the name of a website established by the Biomimicry Institute to catalogue the many sources of inspiration for biomimetic systems and materials. Prairie dogs ventilate their underground warrens by creating two tunnel entrances, one tall and narrow, the other wider and more shallow, which helps suck out stale air. Ask Nature suggests using the system for a passive ventilation system in buildings. Architects, engineers and designers seem to be listening; more and more biomimetic materials are being put into use. Titanium dioxide is used in self-cleaning windows as well as on the bare concrete


54 CLADGLOBAL.COM


Researchers in Berkeley are developing ‘bionic leaves’


walls of Richard Meier's gleaming Jubilee Church in Rome. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are developing a bionic leaf that converts solar energy into hydrogen, which could help fuel electric cars and, eventually, entire buildings. At McGill University in Montreal, the Biomimetic Materials Laboratory is trying to create a synthetic version


of nacre, which forms the inner layer of mollusk shells and is 3,000 times stronger than the mineral from which it is made. No synthetic material can match this kind of ‘toughness amplification,’ to use the technical term. If scientists can determine what allows nacre to become more than the sum of its parts, the durability of other basic materials could be increased.


CLAD mag 2015 ISSUE 1


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