Let’s talk about elephants for a second. These magnificent mammals have been on this planet for over 55 million years. Many of them live in dry, arid climates, so they’ve learned to stay cool thanks to the fine network of wrinkles on their skin, which helps them trap moisture and stay cool.
What if buildings could do the same?
This question is the core principle behind the ever-growing practice of biomimicry, or the act of imitating nature’s designs and processes in man-made systems. Think plane wings modeled after a bird’s wings, orVelcroinspired by the tiny hooks at the ends of bur needles. Popularized by American biologist Jenine Benyus in 1997, biomimicry is now seeing renewed urgency as a design solution to the climate crisis.Jamie Miller has been putting principles of biomimicry into practice since 2007, consulting for design firms, and teaching Canada’s only biomimicry program at OCAD University. A designer and engineer, Miller was trained by Benyus herself, then went on to found his consulting company Biomimicry Frontiers. Now, Miller has been hired as the first director of biomimicry at B+H, a Canadian architecture firm with projects around the world. His title is one of the first in the field of architecture—but it hints at a significant shift of perspective in an industry that has long been fighting nature, instead of working with it.
A frontrunner in biomimicry
Since he joined B+H in November of last year, Miller has been involved in several residential master plans from Ontario to Gabon, as well as the design of a residential house in India. He says that forest canopies, mangroves, and silk spiders can all teach us how to design more efficient, sustainable buildings. For the design of the house in Bengaluru, India, for instance, the firm is using various cooling strategies inspired by elephant skin and termite mounds, all the while recreating a garden ecosystem inspired by how forests work. The elephant skin, for example, inspired them to create a passive cooling wall made of stones stacked on top of each other, while the termite mounds inspired the design of multiple vents that pull in cold air and push out hot air, much like the tunnels inside a mound. “What’s exciting is that we’re now exploring how to embed biomimicry into all facets of B+H,” he says.
A sign of progress
In recent years, the dramatic rise of chief sustainability officers—in design and architecture, but also among Fortune 500 firms—has shown the increased importance that organizations are placing on environmental issues. But for Miller, biomimicry isn’t just a subset of sustainability, it’s the foundation. “Biomimicry is the only model of sustainability we have, based on how long it’s been around and how few years humans have been around,” he says.
A tool for climate change
In the end, Miller sees biomimicry as a driving factor to mitigate climate change, which has long been labeled as a “wicked problem” because it relies on so many interdependent factors that it can seem impossible to resolve. Miller, however, believes solutions are difficult because we keep drawing on past ideas and perpetuating the same mistakes we’ve always made. “Biomimicry allows us to step aside and look at the world differently,” he says.
And if we can’t figure out how to do it, then we should look to nature—because it probably already has.
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