Title: Reading and Audio-Visual Assignments
Course: GFM 103 Exterior Environmental Management > Section: GFM 103 Exterior Environmental Management

Reading and Audio-Visual Assignments

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Biomimicry Systematic Approach in Grounds Cooling

In this illustration, the Biomimicry is very obvious. Both hard and soft engineering examples depict biomimicry. However, the soft example is a much more holistic model with multiple benefits. And which surface will be cooler?

Recent success stories exist in terms of how biomimicry can be applied to building design. While buildings serve to protect us from nature's extremes, this does not mean that they do not have anything to learn from the biological world. In fact, nature regularly builds structures with functionality that human-built structures could usefully emulate. Biomimetic research, science, and applications continue to grow and are already influencing the next generation of building products and systems as well as whole building designs.

For example, photovoltaic systems, which harvest solar energy, are a first step at mimicking the way a leaf harvests energy. Research is underway to create solar cells that more closely resemble nature. These cells are water-gel-based—essentially artificial leaves—that couple plant chlorophyll with carbon materials, ultimately resulting in a more flexible and cost-effective solar cell. (For more information see this article in Scientific American)

The Biomimicry Institute, a not-for-profit organization that promotes learning from and then emulating natural forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable and healthier human technologies and designs, suggests that the design team look at nature as "model, measure, and mentor." There are hundreds of technologies inspired by proven design systems existing in nature. One can become more familiar with these examples by broadening and deepening an inner awareness of nature.

Ask Nature, developed by the Biomimicry Institute, is a free, open source, online project designed to inspire innovation and technologies that create conditions conducive to life. To accomplish this, Ask Nature is organizing the world's biological literature by function along with providing access to biological blueprints and strategies, bio-inspired products and design sketches, and access to experts to talk with and collaborate with to solve problems. To utilize the tool and apply this broader method of thinking into a building project, begin by asking:

- How would nature solve green building challenges?
- How does life make things?
- How does life make the most of things?
- How does life make things disappear into systems?