Birds, insects, trees, and animals in our environment face the same climate and conditions we do, and they have learned not only how to survive but also to thrive. These organisms and their ecosystems can teach us how to create not just sustainable, LEED buildings, but restorative developments that provide the same level of oxygen, water filtration, and soil fertility, as the original habitat. We call these natural lessons the Genius of Place and Genius of Biome.

Thomas Knittel of HOK and other experts in the built environment will discuss Genius of Place and Genius of Biome during a workshop at the Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference, June 21-23, at UMass Boston.

Through interactive breakout sessions, workshop participants will focus on major challenges facing community resiliency and will develop conceptual strategies to identify possible biomimetic solutions. Challenges selected by the group through a voting process may include sea level rise, extreme weather conditions (hurricane/drought), storm-water management, local resource and material stewardship, and/or carbon sequestration. We will utilize the biomimicry approach of defining the challenge, “biologizing” the question and identifying champions in nature to develop strategies to address these challenges. Each group will have an opportunity to address two separate challenges.

At the end of session, break out groups will share their findings and we will discuss possible next steps for participants to move these concepts forward to develop their generous community. Utilizing the principles of biomimicry and its inherent inter-disciplinary collaboration, we have the opportunity to re-think how cities and natural ecosystems can work together to adapt and mitigate climate change.

For more information or to register for the event, visit our Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference web page.

She founded and directs the Mediated Matter design research group at MIT. Her group explores how digital design and fabrication technologies mediate between matter and environment to radically transform the design and construction of objects, buildings, and systems.

Oxman will give a keynote on material ecology on Saturday, June 22, 2013. She coined the term material ecology to describe the study and design of products and processes integrating environmentally-aware, computational form-generation processes and digital fabrication. Her goal is to enhance the relationship between the built and the natural environments by employing design principles inspired by nature and implementing them in the invention of novel digital design technologies. Areas of application include product and architectural design, as well as digital fabrication and construction.

For more information or to register for the event, visit our Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference web page.

Video of Neri Oxman courtesy of Pop!Tech

Applications can only submitted online from January 7 to April 26, 2013. If you would like to download the Biomimicry Professional application, click here.

Please take some time to watch our Biomimicry Professional program alumni reflect on their time in the program, and answer some frequently asked questions.

 “How did you discover the Biomimicry Professional Program?”

Answered by:
Sara El Sayed
Co-founder, Dayma Journeys and Nawaya
Cairo, Egypt
Biomimicry Professional 2011

 ”What is your favorite lesson from the Biomimicry Professional Program?”

Answered by:
Gamelihle Sibanda
Chief Technical Advisor, United Nations International Labour Organisation
Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Biomimicry Professional 2011

Alessandro Biancardi
Environmental Advisor, UNDP Partnership for the Future Programme
Brussels, Belgium
Biomimicry Professional 2011

“Did the Biomimicry Professional program set you in a new direction?”

Answered by:
Amy Coffman Phillips
Founder, Liquid Triangle Design and Consulting
Naperville, Illinois, USA
Biomimicry Professional 2011

“How do you plan to apply biomimicry to your work?”

Answered by:
Hugo Alfonso Araujo Cruz
Owner, Sustentavía
Mexico City DF, Mexico
Biomimicry Professional 2011

Mauricio Ramirez
Sustainable Development Coordinator, Bovis Lend Lease
Mexico City DF, Mexico
Biomimicry Professional 2011

“What makes the Biomimicry Professional program unique?”

Answered by:
Lindsay James
Director of Strategic Sustainability, InterfaceFLOR
Grayslake, Illinois, USA
Biomimicry Professional 2011

Hugo Alfonso Araujo Cruz
Owner, Sustentavía
Mexico City DF, Mexico
Biomimicry Professional 2011

“Do you have a biological “ah-ha” moment?”

Answered by:
Doug Paige
Assoc. Professor, Cleveland Institute of Art, Principal, Douglas J. Paige Design
Lakewood, Ohio, USA
Biomimicry Professional 2011

Hugo Alfonso Araujo Cruz
Owner, Sustentavía
Mexico City DF, Mexico
Biomimicry Professional 2011

Inspired by fish gills, newt tadpoles, and human arteries, a team of civil engineering graduate students from the University of Toronto developed a design that could increase water delivery efficiency, decrease water-borne illness, and lower wastewater operating costs. The team won first prize in the first round of the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge, organized by the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute. “We asked students to look at how nature deals with water access and management and apply that knowledge to solve a human design problem,” said Megan Schuknecht, director of university education at the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute. “It’s amazing that by studying a fish gill, this team created a design that could impact water infrastructure on a world-wide scale. The Challenge judges were wowed by their ingenuity and the positive effect this design could have on urban water distribution systems.”

In tackling water management, the civil engineering students focused on the challenge that air entrapment plays in the operation of a pipeline system. If not managed effectively, the release of compressed air within a pipeline can be explosive, and surges in pressure can cause fractures and ultimately lead to water loss. Cracks within pipelines also allow for the infiltration of pollutants, a known cause of water-borne epidemics around the globe.

Their challenge then, was to find a more efficient design for releasing entrapped air from water pipeline systems.

“We looked back and forth between water management issues we were most concerned about and organisms for inspiration until we found an ideal match: a current need that could be solved by nature’s ingenuity” said Rebecca Dziedzic, member of the University of Toronto team. “Fish rely on separating oxygen from water in order to breathe. When we looked closely at gills, we realized that the design principles applied by these organisms could be replicated, creating an efficient, adaptable, and multifunctional device.”

The University of Toronto team will receive $2,500 for their first place design. Second place prize of $1,000 will be awarded to a team from Artesis University College Antwerp in Belgium for their “Time Capsule” design, which uses evaporative cooling inspired by the honeybee to keep fruits and vegetables fresh at minimal cost and with minimal water use. Third place prize and $500 will go to Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, for their “Fog Farming Dynamic System,” which allows farmers to cultivate plants in the Atacama Desert environment by combining existing fog-capture technology with a unique planting.pattern. A special $1,000 award from Autodesk will go to the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mexico, for their use of resources on the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop website to minimize the environmental impact of their design.

Biomimicry 3.8 Institute staff and a panel of designers, scientists, engineers, and business leaders judged the design challenge proposals according to the teams’ understanding and application of biomimicry, solution creativity, potential for impact, presentation quality, team collaboration, and Life’s Principles (design lessons from nature).

In the next and final round of competition, the three winning teams, as well as select teams with promising proposals, will take their designs closer to development and implementation. These teams will receive live mentoring from StartupNectar, a biomimicry business incubator, and will refine their designs for consideration in the competition’s $10,000 Grand Prize and $1,000 People’s Choice Award. Those awards will be given at the Institute’s annual Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference, to be held in Boston, MA, June 21-23, 2013.

The design competition launched in September 2012 and attracted 68 entries from teams located in 14 US states and 18 countries. Abstracts from every design proposal that was submitted are available on www.biomimicrydesignchallenge.com.

The Biomimicry Student Design Challenge is sponsored by David Oakey Designs and Autodesk.

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The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 to promote the study and imitation of nature’s remarkably efficient designs, and to bring together teachers, students, scientists, engineers, architects, and innovators who can use natural models to create sustainable technologies. The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute promotes learning from and then emulating natural forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable and healthier human technologies and designs.

Biomimicry (from the Greek bios meaning life, and mimesis meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates those designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell or coral to create carbon-sequestering cement are examples of biomimicry happening today. Biomimicry’s sensible, earth-friendly approach to design has tremendous appeal for educators, students, and inventors. The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute’s programs broaden and deepen teachers’ knowledge of biomimicry fundamentals, and facilitate the integration of biomimicry into regional systems.

Responding to Janine Benyus’s call to forge mutualistic relationships, the group of 20 leaders spent two days learning from each other and strategizing ways to align and amplify their work globally while remaining true to local needs and opportunities. Representatives from South Africa, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Quebec, Mexico, New York, Chicago, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, California, and Texas were in attendance. You can learn more about the networks on our webpage and meet members at our Global Conference in Boston later this year.

Special thanks to Travaasa Austin for providing stellar food and accommodations and an exceptionally beautiful setting for the gathering.

In December the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute warmly welcomed three new Biomimicry Fellows from the faculty of the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY). They are architecture professors Jose Luis Cocom and Maella Gonzalez, and biologist and mycology specialist Gloria Cetz Zapata (pictured L – R, above). The Fellows Program recognizes college and university faculty who are committed to advancing biomimicry education at their respective institutions.

Zapata, Gonzalez, and Cocom all trained at our annual Biomimicry and Design Workshop held in Veracruz, México, offered in partnership with our Biomimicry Affiliate Universidad Iberoamericana. Inspired by their experience in Veracruz, the new Fellows organized with others on campus to start a new biomimicry program at UADY, and continue to spread biomimicry in Mexico.

This summer, learn about biomimicry and how to teach it on Thompson Island, within the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute will offer an intensive daylong workshop for educators just prior to the 7th Annual Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference.

Introduction to Biomimicry in Education

Thompson Island, Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, MA
June 20, 2013 | 8:00 am – 5:00 pm | $150

This workshop will provide an introduction to biomimicry, an overview of the Institute’s education programs, and a number of hands-on, outdoor activities that can be used for teaching students from kindergarten through college about reconnecting with nature and applying biomimicry thinking to design. Participants will also have time to explore the unique ecology of the island’s salt marsh and coastal mud flats. Tuition fee ($150) includes boat transportation and lunch.

Following the island experience, teachers seeking PDP’s will spend an additional hour (5:00 pm – 6:00 pm) with Institute staff on the mainland to discuss classroom applications and complete an end-of-course assessment. All workshop participants are welcome to join, regardless if pursuing PDPs.

Professional Development Points

Workshop participants are eligible for 10 PDPs. Points are issued through the University of Massachusetts Boston and require advance registration and an end-of-course assessment. Please follow the instructions posted on the registration page and plan to attend the additional discussion and assessment from 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm following the session on the island (described above).

REGISTER NOW

Save $50 when you sign up for both the Education Summit and the workshop.

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Venue and Transportation

The workshop will be held on the campus of Thompson Island Outward Bound, in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.  Ferry transportation will be provided from the Marine Industrial Park in South Boston. For directions to the ferry, please refer to the Thompson Island website.

Questions? Contact Biomimicry 3.8 Institute Education Services.

We are thrilled to announce the release of our newest lesson plan, “Concrete without Quarries,” a lab geared to help middle-school students learn valuable chemistry lessons based on life-friendly practices. The lab highlights alternatives to the energy-intensive and often-hazardous processes used in traditional school chemistry labs—the same processes used by industrial chemistry labs

“Concrete without Quarries” helps students explore how nature creates calcium carbonate, a compound needed to manufacture cement, at ambient temperatures and using abundant, readily available raw materials. The lesson plan addresses key chemistry education standards and is available to registered educators of our Biomimicry Education Network, which is free to join.

This lesson plan is part of a larger effort to expand our nature-inspired chemistry curricula and resource offerings. We will add more versions of “Concrete without Quarries” for other age groups soon, as well as several other new lab-based lesson plans to our offerings over the next year. For more on nature-inspired chemistry, explore our wealth of new strategies available on AskNature.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the new lesson plan. Please email Megan Schuknecht with any comments.

What do science educators from Sweden, a college professor from Spain, a biology doctoral student from Portugal, business school instructors from Switzerland and the U.K., an entrepreneur from Bulgaria, architects from Turkey, and the founder of a biomimicry organization in Japan all have in common? They recently completed a one-week workshop with Biomimicry 3.8 Institute educators at Findhorn Foundation College in Forres, Scotland, and are eager to use their skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm to promote biomimicry education at their institutions and beyond.

Using an experiential learning process, participants braved frequent Scottish showers to learn some basic tools and techniques of biomimetic design, such as learning to observe nature closely, identifying functional needs, translating biological principles into design terms, and using Life’s Principles to evaluate technologies and systems. The educators also shared an enormous amount of information and techniques with each other, building on the group’s collective knowledge.

Our Biomimicry Educator Training workshops emphasize action, and each educator began developing plans to implement what they learned into their own curricula, programs, and organizations immediately upon their return. Following the workshop, participants have already adapted their syllabi, scheduled internal biomimicry training workshops, taught biomimicry concepts to kids at public museums, and begun work on developing biomimicry toolkits for children.

If your interest is piqued, please consider joining us for one of our next training events. We will conduct a one-day biomimicry training in Boston, MA, in June 2013, prior to our annual Biomimicry Education Summit, and are partnering with Iberoamericana University, one of our Affiliates, to conduct a Biomimicry & Design Workshop in Veracruz State, Mexico, in July 2013.