Posted for Declan Butler
How would nature do it? That’s the premise of the field of biomimetics or biomimicry, which draws on designs and materials that lifeforms have evolved over the course of millions of years.
Now Autodesk, the industry leader in Computer Aided Design software and the maker of Autocad, has got together with Janine Benyus naturalist and founder of the Biomimicry Institute in Missoula Montana. Together they’ve created a free online database called Ask Nature, where they hope to compile nature’s solutions to design and engineering challenges, for creators of all stripes to draw on for inspiration.
“This free database is the only public-domain online library of its kind in the world, where architects, designers and engineers can search for and study nature’s solutions to design challenges – learning, for example, how organisms filter air and water, gather solar energy, and create non-toxic dyes and glues,“ they say.
It’s still in beta, but Ask Nature hopes scientists and others will help build up content.
Items in the database include a Gecko’s foot to inspire adhesive published in PNAS earlier this year. In October, researchers published in Science another adhesive based on Gecko’s feet but ten times stronger, from the press release:
The gecko’s amazing ability to stick to surfaces and walk up walls has inspired many researchers to manufacture materials that mimic the special surface of a gecko’s foot. The secret behind the gecko’s ability to stick so well is a forest of pillars at the micro-/nano-scale on the underside of the gecko’s foot. Because there are so many pillars so close together, they are held tightly to the surface the gecko is walking on by a molecular force called the Van der Waals force. This relatively weak force causes uncharged molecules to attract each other.
Architecture is another area where biomimicry is getting a bit more attention of late. In a feature article earlier this year on green building, I also mentioned George Jeronimidis, an engineer who heads the Centre for Biomimetics at the University of Reading, UK, and who is developing next-generation building materials that adapt their shape, such as vents that open and close in response to humidity levels.
Many of the world’s new buildings are designed using AutoCad or AutoRevit, its architecture suite.
But today’s houses still largely remain variations of boxes, whereas nature has for good reasons tended to evolve curved structures and not straight lines. How long before Autodesk launches an AutoNad, and we see more buildings based on nature’s curved structural solutions?
More from Nature
Naturally better. Science and technology are looking to nature’s successful designs for inspiration
Biomimetism and bioinspiration as tools for the design of innovative materials and systems
Material witness: Does nature know best?
Towards biomimetic architecture
Image: via AskNature.org, a project of The Biomimicry Institute.