Designing Buildings After Nature: An Introduction to Biomimicry

Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then emulates these forms, process, systems, and strategies to solve human problems – sustainably. By taking a look around, designers can find inspiration everywhere – particularly in nature. Nature provides us with an amazing array of solutions for many complex problems that we face today – the quest to learn from nature in this way is biomimicry, and architecture can benefit from this kind of approach. By delving more deeply into how nature solves problems that we experience today, we can extract timely solutions and find new directions for our built environments. We can benefit from biomimicry to make buildings better by pushing for more natural, integrated, efficient and healthy solutions.