Evolution meets creation

Humpback whale flippers are the inspiration behind WhalePower blades.

At first glance, a humpback whale and a wind turbine don’t have a lot in common. For that matter, neither do a shellfish and a sheet of plywood. But both sea creatures are the inspiration behind products designed using biomimicry, or looking to nature’s designs and processes to solve human problems.

For those who know where to look, biomimetically inspired products can be found in almost every corner of the marketplace, from medicine to transportation. But where the emerging field has the potential for the greatest impacts, according to advocates and practitioners, is in changing the way we think about our built environment—not only in designing individual building products, but in conceiving of entire communities as biomimetic systems, not to mention businesses, government bodies and other “systems.”

The launch of the Biomimicry Venture Group in 2008 by Paul Hawken and Janine Benyus, a naturalist and writer whose 1997 book, “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature,” defined the concept, could help seed the concept even deeper into the marketplace. And the recent launch of AskNature.org, a biomimicry encyclopedia for designers backed by industry giant Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK), shows the evolution of the biomimicry movement within the design industry.

A world of inspiration
“If we get the built world right, we can get a lot right,” Benyus says. While drawing upon nature as a model and inspiration for design is a centuries-old practice, biomimicry has been driven largely by Benyus, who co-founded the Helena, Mont.–based Biomimicry Guild, a consultancy whose clients include corporate giants such as General Electric (NYSE: GE), Proctor and Gamble (NYSE: PG) and General Mills (NYSE: GIS). The guild’s nonprofit counterpart, the Biomimicry Institute, promotes biomimicry and offers education and training for both students and professionals.

“Biomimicry has taken off dramatically in the last year or two, but I don’t think we’ve reached the tipping point,” says Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability for Autodesk, the San Rafael, Calif.–based maker of design software.

AskNature.org, launched in late 2008 by both Autodesk and the Biomimicry Institute, is part social network, part library. The site matches nature’s solutions to design problems, and lists ways such concepts could be applied to the human-built environment. It also provides a forum for people to contribute ideas and share information. Not to mention, it’s visually stunning. Partnering with the institute to sponsor the site was a natural fit for Autodesk—whose products are used by more than 9 million professionals in almost 200 countries—because it already aims to make complex information simpler and more accessible to all designers, Cameron says.

Since its launch, the site has exceeded expectations, Cameron says, but it is still in its beginning stages. “With sustainability, if we’re doing our job, well we’re predicting what [customers] will want in the future,” she says. With the enthusiastic response the site has received so far, it must be adaptable in order to stay ahead of the curve. The collaborative nature of the site is key to the concept of biomimicry, as well, she says. Biomimicry is less about getting like-minded people together and more about getting people from disparate backgrounds together to find connections and solutions to problems in unlikely places.