BIO MIMICRY- FUTURE DESIGN

In early days, bio mimetic design was an amorphous idea, without a singular guiding methodology or end goal. That all changed with the 1997 book Bio-mimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, which gave the world it's first working definition of bio-mimicry and introduced capitalists, designers and scientists to the ingenuous ways the Earth has thoroughly mitigated many design problems over it's 3.80 billion-year development.

Animals have been developing energy-efficient and innovative solutions for millions of years, for the challenges of living in the world. Bio-mimicry allows designers to adapt similar solutions to the built environment but in a fraction of time.

There are very deep methodologies around learning about nature, but not learning from nature. Bio-mimicry borrows nature's blueprints, ecosystem strategies, processes and recipes and then comes up with design solutions to solve our own problems.

The idea of looking at animals and plants to improve the functionality and sustainability of human creations is gaining steam in today's architecture design and engineering industry. Mega-structures like East-gate Center, Eden Project or Sahara Dessert Project demonstrate how bio mimetic solutions can improve the efficiency, quality and sustainability of buildings, which has a desperate need.

It's common sense to use the bio-mimicry approach. If we want to make our built environment stronger and able to stand up to the elements, we have to design organically.

Nature is the original driver of innovation on this planet. A lot of innovation is about constraints, so the simple resilience of natural systems can serve as a great source of inspiration for new approaches to design and manufacturing.

Along with buildings, architectural materials that borrow from biology should take hold in the market. For example, exterior cladding- the products should allow the building's exterior envelope to self-operate, self-shade and self-ventilate without using electricity.

But a designer does not necessarily need to be a biologist to come to similar realizations. Once you develop an eye, you will see inspiration everywhere.

With bio-metric architectural programming and materials becoming increasingly viable, the hope for a new paradigm of environmentally friendly building does not seem so far fetched. Bio- mimicry proves that it's codes can make the built environment as hospitable as life to the natural world.

The bio-metric craze is picking up steam and not a moment too soon. The next frontier in bio-metric design will be 3D printing, which will allow designers to create designs at site, echoing nature's way of existing in a local context.

We are still dealing with oblongs, rectangles and squares in designing- these are inorganic shapes that create limitations. In the future, let's imagine architects will be able to design in different shapes that merges with nature's principles, which have shown time and time again to be better than anything we can come up with on our own.

Like natural systems, bio-metric designs are self-reinforcing and self- solving. Some of the beauty in their form derives from the efficiency and robustness of their function.

Now that's a promising future for the industry.