Design Tips from Mother Nature

Biomimicry, the practice of designing according to natural principles, has garnered devotees from many industries, producing a wide variety of innovative results

By Matt Vella

Ten years ago, biologist Janine Benyus wrote a book that effectively outlined how nature is the world's best designer—and how humans could learn a thing or two by paying attention. Since then, fans have used her way of thinking to create a wide range of products, from a Japanese high-speed train with a distinctively bird-like nose to tony, Dutch furniture modeled after the inner structure of bones. Biomimicry, as the practice is known, is not a product category so much as a method by which designers and engineers look to biological research for clues to how organisms solve complex problems. In other words, design informed by billions of years of evolution. In recent years, that kind of thinking applied in a commercial context has produced all manner of new products such as ultrastrong, nontoxic glues and hyperaerodynamic concept cars.

This October, Benyus—who heads the Biomimicry Institute, a nonprofit research organization, as well as the for-profit Biomimicry Guild, an innovation consultancy—will publish another book: Nature's 100 Best Technologies. Given the breadth of ideas and processes the book will contain, anticipation among designers and sustainability-oriented business leaders is running high. In the meantime, check out some of Benyus' favorite recent bio-inspired innovations.