Biomimicry Institute

Here are the 10 most essential lessons from the natural world that will help to bring nature's genius into your design process. We call them “nature’s unifying patterns” because examples of the patterns can be found broadly across the majority of life on Earth. Our intent is not to present this as a definitive and exhaustive list. Rather, it is a work in progress that we hope will be informed and enhanced by the growing community of biomimics who are practicing applying nature’s lessons to their designs. The intent behind applying nature’s unifying patterns to biomimetic design is to create more sustainable solutions. Bio-inspired design can spur novel ways of thinking and breakthrough ideas, but only by considering nature’s lessons in a systems context can we ensure that our designs will fit in well with life on earth. This is a key step in the practice of biomimicry, and one that distinguishes it from the broader category of bio-inspired design. Once you begin to understand these patterns, you should start applying them at the very beginning of your design process, in the scoping phase, and continue pondering and using them throughout all your design phases. If you're familiar with these patterns, let us know how you've used them! How have they influenced your work? For more, visit https://lnkd.in/grbtgHF2 #biomimicry #design #natureinspired #innovation

How did a single cell guide top scientists to map the dark cosmos? It seems impossible, but it’s not: Slime mold is taking the world on a journey from the yellow splotch in the backyard to the neurons in our brain to galaxies light years away. When we think of mapping the dark cosmos, most would look to the pros:  NASA, ESA, CNES, the Hubble Space Telescope. So why are they turning to slime mold for answers? And how on Earth is a single cell, without a brain, living in a Petri dish, tracing the universe? For any non-astrophysicists out there, a helpful background: At the time of writing, 4% of the universe can be seen (stars, planets, galaxies, gas, voids). What is called dark is the unknown–the stuff astronomers can’t see, grasp or at times even make sense of. The dark cosmos is a mixture of gas, dark matter, galaxies, and galaxy clusters, and these filamentary structures help form the backbone that holds the universe together. The connections are roughly 500 light-years long from Earth–very hard to see and even more difficult to trace and map out. In an attempt to see more of the unseen, post-doctoral researchers including Oskar Elek and Joe Burchett at UC Santa Cruz went through data across the positions of 37,000 (!) galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and created a model of the invisible parts of the sky (like the gasses and dark matter) modeled with an elegant computer algorithm. The algorithm’s source? Slime mold! Continue reading the full article by Katie Losey, and the entire 8-part slime mold blog series on the Biomimicry Blog. https://lnkd.in/gZgEvakx Image/Video Credit: Shahrzad Yazdi #biomimicry #asknature #slimemold #katieloseywashere

Today, we are exploring big questions at the 2024 Launchpad Retreat, with the Biomimicry Institute's Dave Hutchins. Once again, we have completed a weeklong nature immersion as part of our Launchpad Program. We brought together 20 of the most curious and creative minds from around the world in May to share ideas in the wilds of Montana, and reconnect with nature and themselves. It was a rare opportunity to slow down, listen to nature’s wisdom, and cultivate a culture of mutual respect. https://lnkd.in/gnRkWBc3 Sarah McInerney | Dave Hutchins | Jared Yarnall-Schane | Daniel Panameño Corvera | Elena Stachew | Hannah Trimble | Pham Huy Nguyen | Jamil Quarless | Joe Cardiello | Juliette Zidek | Kira Hunt | Lucca Mancilio | Marco Leitão | Meiting Guo | Michelle Lowe-Holder | Paige Perillat-Piratoine | Pranav Khandelwal | Rae Lewark | Rakkiyappan Chandran, PhD | Tica Lubin, MASD, SEA | Yael L. #biomimicry #reflections #launchpadretreat #connections

The Biomimexpo is in full swing today in Paris! We are thrilled to see so many amazing minds come together in support of biomimicry and a nature-inspired future--including our own Maëlys Renaud and Ray of Hope alumni Novobiom and CompPair Technologies Ltd.! Be sure to seek them out! #biomimexpo #biomimicry #natureinspired

Corals Break Up to Build Back When pieces of coral are broken off of a reef (by a wave, or a parrotfish, or a rogue anchor), a natural healing process kicks in. Detecting the open space around the break, the individual coral polyps stop spending energy to produce gametes for sexual reproduction that will send baby corals far and wide. Instead, the polyps focus on getting bigger and reproducing by budding––growing a clone of themselves that will stay right where it is. As the broken fragments expand, they also can fuse with other pieces nearby, protecting themselves by becoming part of a larger, stronger, and safer colony once again. Researchers have even found that some of the slowest growing corals can be encouraged to expand this way, as a method for helping to rebuild damaged reefs around the world. Read all about this fascinating strategy on AskNature.org: https://lnkd.in/g7RyQpD6 #biomimicry #asknature #corals #inspiredbynature #worldoceansweek

Conservation tech is a growing sector and at the Biomimicry Institute with the Ray of Hope Accelerator we’re thrilled to support innovative startups like Coral Vita pioneering the field and learning from nature to best support ecosystem restoration and resilience. Our planet has lost more than half of its living coral since 1950, a result of climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, and pollution - and it takes thousands of years to grow thriving reefs. Coral farming is proven to help restore reefs, but standard ocean-based farms are limited in scale, species diversity, and geography, and they are not quite tailored to enhance corals’ resilience against climate change. Discover in this animation video how startup Coral Vita (cohort 2023) harnesses corals’ natural healing processes through micro fragmentation, associated with on land-based farms, to grow climate change-resilient corals up to 50 times faster than in nature! Using a restoration as a service (RaaS) commercial model to fund ecosystem-scale impact, they launched operations in multiple countries, and won Prince William’s inaugural Revive Our Oceans Earthshot Prize. Animator: Jules Bartl Script and Narration: Charlotte Stoddart Sound Design: Nigel Manington Fact checker: Rachael Bale Special thanks to the Ray C. Anderson Foundation https://lnkd.in/gXk5GKxe Ray of Hope Accelerator (formerly Prize): https://lnkd.in/dcFSnAt Sign Up for our Innovation Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gaByYps9 Visit the Biomimicry Institute: biomimicry.org/ Visit Coral Vita: www.coralvita.co/ Learn more on Coral Vita’s inspiration and innovation on AskNature.org: Strategy: https://lnkd.in/g7RyQpD6 Innovation: https://lnkd.in/geU5y2yQ #biomimicry #asknature #coralvita #innovation #rayofhopeaccelerator #inspiredbynature

Is a Blob Capable of Rethinking Our Built World Without Bias, Boundaries—or a Brain? It’s been a consultant for NASA, shot at by police and mistaken for an alien. How slime mold–a brainless, single-celled organism–mapped the dark universe, keeps challenging the top minds to rethink what intelligence even is and has an ability to fill us with wonder beyond the human kind. They’ve mapped rail systems, nervous systems, the cosmos and gave us a fresh take on Paris. But how? And what does this mean for future cities and how we live in them? Their accomplishments are credible and incredible. When scientists in Japan let slime mold loose in an area with oats arranged in a way that matched Tokyo’s city locations and population densities (bigger oats for bigger cities), the organism was able to identify the most direct connections between cities. More incredible, the slime mold took 26 hours to map a masterwork of engineering that took humans 100 years. Many argue they created a better model: their routes connected less frequently to areas that already had sufficient service making it even more efficient and less congested. Why this matters: In slime mold we have a possible breakthrough to rethink our built world without bias, boundaries (or a brain). The unique intelligence of slime mold is not just applied to our cities–but also our imaginations–pushing the edge of what’s possible for both. Read the full article + the full 8-part Slime Mold series by our guest writer, Katie Losey: bit.ly/slime-mold-blog-6 Video Credit: Andy Adamatzky #biomimicry #asknature #slimemold #katieloseywashere

Think science is cool? (Understatement of the century.) Join our CEO Amanda Sturgeon, FAIA in the latest Science is Cool (ScIC) podcast from PocketLab to learn about the power of biophilic design and biomimicry to connect people with nature and revolutionize architecture.  Educators, if you already use PocketLab for their abundance of lesson plans and curriculum, you can also find core lessons from our Youth Design Challenge curriculum for free on the site here: https://lnkd.in/gKHN9t5d For Amanda's full interview, visit: https://hubs.ly/Q02y7HYl0 Thanks Dave Bakker and the PocketLab team! #Biomimicry #BiophilicDesign #EcoDesign #BiomimicryInstitute #STEMeducation #PodcastEpisode #PocketLab #ScienceIsCool

Sea otters: Fluffy, warm... and buoyant! Understanding how sea otters’ layered fur keeps them warm in frigid waters could inform the design of insulation in wearables, and in particular, for situations where people or temperature-sensitive materials move frequently into and out of water. So, how do the otters do it? While some aquatic mammals rely on blubber to stay warm, sea otters rely on their specialized fur. A unique two-layer fur pelt keeps air trapped close to their skin even when submerged, and allows them to keep warm. Of all mammals, sea otters have the densest fur, followed by fur seals who use a similar system. Like the pelts of all fur-bearing animals, sea otter fur is made up of two types of hair that grow in clusters together: guard hairs and underhairs. The underhairs are shorter and denser, with three or more growing in a follicle for every one guard hair. Guard hairs are longer, and extend over the underhairs, creating a protective canopy. Researchers have found that sea otters may have as many as 108 underhairs bundled with a single guard hair! The fur of sea otter pups is so remarkably dense, it traps enough air to make the pups naturally buoyant, so they won’t sink when their parents turn their back. Zooming in, researchers have found that aquatic mammals reliant on fur for insulation have more elongated scales on the cuticle (outer layer) of their underhair than do blubber-reliant mammals. The longer protrusions allow the hairs to interlock, keeping water out and trapping air bubbles within, creating an insulating layer (and a floatation layer for the pups!). Marine carnivores’ pelts are far better at achieving this than those of land-dwelling carnivores, providing evidence that the adaptation likely evolved to help mammals survive in aquatic environments. For more, visit AskNature.org and this great piece by Katie Krupin https://lnkd.in/e_PGG4_B

It's International Biodiversity Day, and we are proud to be part of the plan. Not only is today an opportunity to pause and be thankful for the astonishing array of life on this planet, but to consider how we can take actionable steps to protect it. Here's why: - Biodiversity supports healthy ecosystems - Biodiversity is crucial for the health of humanity and all life - Biodiversity has served crucial cultural importance for Indigenous peoples around the world since time immemorial - A healthy economy depends on healthy biodiversity Given that 90% of biodiversity loss is due to the extraction and processing of natural resources, we have to do better. To learn more from UN Biodiversity, visit: https://lnkd.in/edESKrDY #BiodiversityDay #InternationalBiodiversityDay #Biodiversity #Conservation #biomimicry #partoftheplan #fornature