Fifteen people from the audience are called on to the stage and asked to align themselves according to one rule set by the moderator — that each person has to select two others as his or her “prey” and form a triangle with them. There is a bit of jostling and shuffling, but in a couple of minutes an equilibrium is reached without any outside intervention or anyone taking up the role of leader.
“Given time, nature finds an equilibrium,” said Seema Anand, co-founder of startup Biomimicry India, setting the stage for an exposition on learning designs from nature at ScienceComm’17 India, held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies recently.
Biomimicry is an approach to design and innovate, finding solutions by emulating nature’s patterns. According to Ms. Anand and Biomimicry India co-founder Prashant Dhawan, many design problems in the world have already been solved by nature. All one needs is an eye for the solution.
The solutions can range from the microscopic to the massive — from slime mould growing in patterns to ensure maximum utilisation of resources to vehicle designs inspired by fauna. A few years ago, Mercedes Benz modelled a car frame in the shape of a box fish and found that just changing the shape of the frame improved the car’s fuel efficiency by 20%.
Another group of scientists found that when slime mould was dropped at the centre of oat crumbs arranged on a Tokyo map, it grew in a pattern that mapped the city’s rail network. Slime mould is a unicellular organism that grows by multiplying, making it all the more astonishing that the networks of nutrient-channelling tubes mimicked what took engineers countless hours to come up with.
Thinking differently
The architect duo started Biomimicry India with the goal to bring this insight into design to universities and companies in India. They have organised workshops and courses on biomimicry at the National Institute of Design (Bengaluru and Vijayawada), the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad, Visweswaraya Technological Museum, and Shrishti School of Art Design and Technology, Bengaluru.
“Nature values what is abundant and uses a small subset of elements. It uses additive manufacturing while humans do the opposite. 3D printing is the closest we have come to building like nature does,” Mr. Dhawan said.
For the two, the most gratifying moment is when engineers who have been working on a problem for years find a new way to look at it after a session with them. “We held a workshop for senior executives of a major automotive company in India. The engineers identified major stress points in design. For instance, tractors in Ladakh have difficulty in getting started every morning because of the cold. We suggested that they explore how organisms living in a cold climate adapt. The engineers responded that the engines were exposed to the sun all day, so maybe they could design them in such a way as to retain the heat generated during the day,” Mr. Dhawan said.
Interdisciplinary innovation cannot happen by just putting a bunch of people in a room, said Mr. Dhawan. “For biomimicry to succeed, it has to be a collaboration among biologists, engineers, designers, business people and scientists.”
