Visual Culture | Bio-mimicry | Art History Photography

Bio-mimicry Defined

For those interested in Bio-mimicry and Bio-inspired design, I though I'd give you a brief definition from AskNature.org -

"Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a design discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The core idea is that Nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with: energy, food production, climate control, non-toxic chemistry, transportation, packaging, and a whole lot more."

This 3 step example helps explain a core element of my research:

"Looking at Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor:

Consciously emulating Nature's genius means viewing and valuing the natural world differently. In biomimicry, we look at Nature as model, mentor, and measure.

Model: Biomimicry is a new science that studies Nature’s models and then emulates these forms, processes, systems, and strategies to solve human problems – sustainably.

Mentor: Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but what we can learn from it.

Measure: Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the sustainability of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, Nature has learned what works and what lasts."

(source: asknature.org)

The Natural World - A Library of Design Ideas (Cont'd)

"A Stickybot is a state-of-the-art robotic lizard that can scale smooth surfaces like walls and windows with the ease of Spiderman. Products that may make your life easier in the not-too-distant future. The Pentagon hopes to someday use the gecko-inspired device as a "spy in the sky" to watch over enemy territory"
-ABC News

Above:
Close-up of a gecko foot, showing the pads that bear microscopic branched elastic hairs that use atomic-scale forces to grip surfaces. Source: Georgia Tech Research

This collabarative success was shared between Prof. Cutkosky and his team at Stanford University and John Ho Lee and R. Full, Professor of Integrative Biology of The University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Full has studied the design principles behind nature since becoming intrigued by the velcro of the cockle-burs plant that clung to his dog's fur; and has since developed a separate department at UC Berkeley, learning from the natural world, called the Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research. Bringing together engineers, designers, biologists and scientists from different fields to work together to develop progress in this fast moving field.

Left: The result of collaborative success across two fields with the Stickybot.

Professor Full goes on to state that Bio-mimicry is not however as simple as it sounds. There is more to it than just copying nature. Currently the natural world has been developing and innovating itself for the past 3.6 Billion years. Nature knows what works and what doesn't. Full claims: "Bio-mimicry is the study of systems and elements in nature, and adapting them to solve modern, human problems...the problem is that evolution does not function on an "optimizing principles" rather it runs on a "just good enough" concept, as this is all it needs. However, this is different from how we consider design in engineering, hence the problem. To evolve you just need to survive, we can take the general principles and adapt them for our own specific needs."

So with collaborative success, the bio-mimicry concept can run and run. Who knows what bio-inspired design limits might hold?

The Natural World - A Library of Design Ideas

Since 15th Century philosophy of science and of the world around us, we have come a very substantial way. Having said this, key principles then are still are the foreground of innovation and ideologies surrounding design and science today. Leonardo Da Vinci first constructed the idea of "bio inspiration" - noting the movement and "technology" of birds flight. Which lead to the early concept of a hand-glider, and ultimately what we know today as a helicopter.

Below: Da Vinci's initial drawings around the idea of using naturally inspired design from birds he saw flying around him. Source: http://www.engineering.sfasu.edu/

Furthering my research into bio-mimicry, I have been investigating the adhesive quality that geckos hold. Professor Mark R. Cutkosky at Stanford University, engineered and developed the "Stickybot" with a collegue who designed the robrotical gecko.

The geckos feet are made up of thousands upon thousands of tiny hairs, which are effectively, merely split ends. These hairs, similar to that of the leaf like structures which appear like a rug microscopically, is what helps the gecko to move over 1 meter/second. These intermolecular forces (not glue or velcro like as previously suggested by others in the field) are self cleaning and never lose their adhesive ability.

Professor Cutkosky writes:

"Stickybot is an embodiment of our hypotheses about the requirements for mobility on vertical surfaces using dry adhesion. The main point is that we need controllable adhesion. The essential ingredients are:

Hierarchical compliance for conforming at centimeter, millimeter and micrometer scales,
Anisotropic dry adhesive materials and structures so that we can control adhesion by controlling shear,
Distributed active force control that works with compliance and anisotropy to achieve stability"

Dissertation

Structure in nature as a strategy for Design.

Explore and investigate the structures, forms and geometries found in the natural world and how we use these in 21st Century design with specific reference to architecture. By analyzing and looking deeper at the natural world around us I hope to have some conclusive writing on this topic.

Research Ties

Professor R Knott Ph.D, M.Sc, B.Sc (Pure Maths), C.Math, FIMA, C.Eng, MBCS, CITP Visiting Fellow, Department of Mathematics, School of Electronics and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey who has excellent research in the mathmatic field which has aided my study. You can hear Ron's on BBC Radio 4 Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time (November 29, 2007) discussing "The Fibonacci Numbers" by following this link.

Other notable persons include Professor M.A Hann, [BA (Leeds) MPhil (Leeds) PhD (Leeds)] whose subject interests include fundamental aspects of design geometry and the development of methodologies to synthesis and analyze designs. (More on Prof. Hann here).

As well as these two professors, further afield in South Korea Professor Hee Bong Lee (Faculty of Architecture) of Chung-Ang University, Seoul who I studied under during a summer programme, who has introduced ideas and perspectives of natural design in traditional Korean Architecture from ancient dynastic Korea to contemporary design in what is now one of the world's fastest growing economies constantly rebuilding and innovating architecture.

Online

There are already a couple of great sites online looking at this issue namely AskNature.org which has a wonderful network or people across all disciplines of design, science and engineering sharing information and research on the role natural design has to play in the world.

Extract from Ask Nature's website:

"Imagine 3.8 billion years of design brilliance available for free, at the moment of creation, to any sustainability innovator in the world.

Imagine nature's most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you can enter "filter salt from water" and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels.

Now imagine you can meet the people who have studied these organisms, and together you can create the next great bio-inspired solution."

This is a great website in which I hope will put me in touch with some influential people in the field and benefit my studies.