Conclusions

What does biomimicry mean for people?

147. The famous biologist E. O. Wilson once opined that ‘Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.’ Can we learn to shape a positive future for which the defining characteristic is one of long-term abundance?

‘Saving the planet’ is often used as short-hand for environmentalism. But, in reality, the planet is not in danger. What is at stake is whether we can create happy, healthy lives for everyone, or whether we will become embroiled in what several scientists have described as ‘a perfect storm’ of catastrophic climate change, resource wars and ecosystem breakdown.²²⁷

The substantial extent to which biomimicry could mitigate or avoid that scenario is perhaps the most significant connection between biomimicry and people. There are also many others that have been described in this book and are worth summarising. Biomimetic structures, like Nervi’s Palazzetto dello Sport (fig. 25), have a legibility to them that creates an emotional connection with the user. This enjoyment of beauty and the tangibility of force made manifest in material is something that could be extended even further with mastery of adaptive structures and advanced structural analysis. The Eden Project, in the way that it accommodated the forms of the existing site, creates a more respectful reconciliation between humans and nature. The same could be said of a biomimetic approach to infrastructure: instead of uninspiring industrial behemoths, our cities could include buildings like the Las Palmas Water Theatre (fig. 108), which elevate the mundane to the level of sculpture.

The ‘materials are expensive and shape is cheap’ mantra is something that could put people at the centre of architecture: employing people’s ingenuity with more design input and more physical input in the richly rewarding act of building. While some approaches to biomimicry involve high technology, others involve low-tech or even no-tech approaches. Biomimetic technology, such as the 3D printer using clay, could empower our resourcefulness with cheap and readily available materials. Rethinking linear systems as cyclical systems can be easier to achieve with simple technologies than with sophisticated ones, because what we refer to as high technologies (a disputable phrase when compared to spider silk and glass sponges) often use materials and assemblies that frustrate, rather than facilitate, dismantling. As is evident in the Cardboard to Caviar Project, these low-tech ecosystem models can be regenerative to people, landscapes and economies. An important part of designing ecosystem models is to design out toxins, which not only avoids waste but would make a significant contribution to human health.

Increasingly, over the decades ahead, we are likely to face resource constraints and it is reassuring to know that biology has a wealth of adaptations to many of those constraints. Employing this design ingenuity in dealing with water, food and energy challenges could go a long way towards avoiding resource-based conflicts. Resource constraints can, and need to, stimulate innovation and, quite possibly, lead to the greatest flourishing of human ingenuity since the start of the fossil-fuel age.

While scarcity of some resources will present challenges, I believe the overriding atmosphere of a biomimetic city would be a feeling of abundance: lush vegetation, fresh food, clean air and, at times, even an abundance of energy. A solar economy will result in times when there is an excess of energy (for instance, if all the offshore wind turbines have been at full capacity during extended windy conditions) and cities could put on spectacular lighting displays that do what festivals achieve so successfully: bring people together for large-scale shared experiences.

How can these transformations be accelerated? Often, our first response to a question like this is to think of what would compel change and, while there is a place for legal measures in some circumstances, fiscal measures that reward ingenuity are a surer way to stimulate innovation. Such measures are likely to be more consistent with biomimicry – creating the conditions out of which these transformations would emerge. In the process of evolution, some of the most remarkable adaptations have occurred in response to scarcity or to extreme selective pressure that favoured efficiency. We could stimulate innovation in an equivalent way by shifting taxation away from employment and towards the use of resources. It would also incentivise the kind of ecosystems models we saw in Chapter 3 by rewarding ‘waste entrepreneurs’. Making resources more expensive, before they become problematically scarce, would be one of the best ways to ensure that those resources are used more efficiently. Often, governments do the exact opposite in order to provide a quick fix.²²⁸

I have no doubt that creating a good quality of life for all earth’s future nine billion inhabitants is possible, but I am equally convinced that it will not be achieved with conventional economics, which ignores the unmeasurable and externalises the inconvenient. We should perhaps reflect on the derivation of ‘economy’, which comes from the Greek words oikos meaning ‘home’ and nomos meaning ‘management’. It shares its etymology with the subject with which it so often seems to be in conflict. ‘Ecology’ couples oikos with logos meaning ‘knowledge’. Bringing nomos and logos together, management of our home based on knowledge, surely offers the best chance of creating a positive future.²²⁹ It has long been accepted that exponential, or even continual, growth (which is the modus operandi of conventional economics) is not possible on a finite planet. In recent years, there has been considerable discussion about a ‘zero-growth economy’ or a ‘steady-state economy’ but, in my opinion, neither of those framings is compelling. A much better model would be biological systems, which exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium with high levels of growth, decay and renewal. Such models have the potential to unify the very worthy causes of the circular economy, championed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the ‘100 Resilient Cities’ movement progressed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the numerous initiatives that are advancing the idea of cities and countries transitioning to run on 100 per cent renewables.

We have seen that the notion of a solar economy could be facilitated through biomimetic invention, both directly, in terms of shaping more efficient renewable energy systems, and in radically reducing our energy use. This transformation could deliver numerous benefits – restoring ecosystems, boosting biodiversity, moderating urban microclimate and reducing evaporative water loss. The solar economy is also entirely consistent with the way that nature works in terms of resilience, compatibility and indefinite supply. This is no coincidence. The sun is the source of energy that has supported all life for billions of years. It is abundantly clear that continuing with the fossil-fuel economy poses huge risks and that a solar economy is the best alternative: promoting cooperation rather than conflict and halting the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Biomimicry starts with identifying functional challenges and biological organisms or systems that have solved those challenges. Then follows a process by which the potential solutions are translated into solutions that suit human needs, and that process does not have to be limited by what exists in biology; at its best, biomimicry is a synthesis of the best that biology has evolved with the best that humans can devise. Biomimicry can be a very powerful tool for allowing the design conversation to identify the highest ideals and to then come back to something that is achievable within the constraints of the project and existing technology. Design has the flexibility to range from high technology to using local materials and low- to no-tech approaches – if you consider that the human ingenuity powering biomimicry in architecture is ‘no-tech’.

It would be bordering on the evangelical to suggest that nature has the answer to everything. Nature does not make things out of metals, nor does it have high-speed rotating axles or heat engines. But living organisms, because of the ruthless refinement of evolution, are remarkable models from which we can learn to achieve radical increases in resource efficiency: if we multiply the implications of materials made with a factor-100 energy saving by the efficiencies of structures that are ten times higher than conventional approaches, then we glimpse what could be attained. And, if we do it correctly, all of those materials can be cycled permanently in endless transformations. The very notion of waste can be progressively designed out. With new developments in additive manufacturing using biological raw materials and from learning how to replicate bio- and geo-mineralisation, there is real potential to develop large-scale drawdown technologies that reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Then the construction industry would move comprehensively beyond mitigation to a positive and regenerative paradigm. Much of this may be beyond our current capabilities, but we know that this is not the realm of fantasy because the natural world is living proof of the possibility.

It could be argued that biomimicry is the logical conclusion of a shift in human thought, which has gone from attempting to conquer nature, then trying to preserve it and now striving for reconciliation with nature. With previously unparalleled scientific knowledge, we can use lessons from biology, augmented by human creativity, to retain the many wonderful things that civilisation has developed and rethink the things that have proved to be poorly adapted to the long term. Should we be optimists or pessimists when looking to the future? Hans Rosling argues that we should be neither, as both of those positions imply inevitability. What we should be, he says, is ‘possibilists’.²³⁰ We should decide on the future we want and then set about creating it. The ecological age is now a clear enough destination to aim for and I hope this book will help all those who want to make that journey.