Podcast: Forum Biomimicy event

The Cambridge Resilience Forum event on Biomimicry, featuring Megan Schuknecht & Bryony Schwan, held in Johannesburg on the 9th of September is available as a podcast on Radio Today’s website. Click here to go the podcast and then select Play to listen or Download to download to your PC /Mac.

Radio Today is available on 1485 AM in the greater Johannesburg area or nationally on DStv audio channel 169 and this insert was aired on 21 September.

Toddlers with matchboxes

By Monica Graaff

Ever since we discovered how to use fire, we humans have been like “toddlers with matchboxes” – and dangerously so.

So said science writer and lecturer Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature (first published in 1997). She was talking at the inaugural lecture of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s Resilience Forum in Cape Town on 27 August 2009.

Her fondly delivered description of our “relatively new species” conjures up a vivid image of how we humans have become too smart and successful for our own good. So smart and populous in fact, that our beloved “heat, beat and treat” approach to almost everything could threaten our very own survival.

The problem with our approach to solving problems is that it usually causes a host of other problems in its wake – problems that in turn need solving. Human induced climate change is an obvious example.

Read more

Biomimicry in engineering and building

Green buildings has a positive impact on a number of impacts besides water and electricity savings, says PD Naidoo & Associates Consulting Engineers in a recent Engineering News article.

“Green building is a broad name for efficiency across everything, not only buildings, and includes transport, structures, rail networks and waste disposal.”

This follows on statements in the same publication and in other reports that green buildings also improve the investment case for owners.

PD Naidoo & Associates continue that an increased understanding of the link between a building and its natural environment and the influences these have on each other has also led to new design approaches in construction.

The concept of biomimicry has increased in prevalence, they explain. Biomimicry involves the use of nature as inspiration for design concepts. Conventional examples of this are termite mounds, which run as efficient large-scale city-type habitations, and the invention of Velcro arising from observations of burrs on animal fur.

In the recent Brunel Lecture, Peter Head, director of ARUP, also referred to the 10 principles of Biomimicry as providing the solutions for sustainable design.

To learn a lot more about biomimicry, we invite you to attend one of the public lectures by Janine Benyus and some of the directors of the Biomimicry Institute. Get all the info here…

Janine Benyus recently spoke alongside former US president Bill Clinton and renowned business author Peter Senge at the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment Summit in Chicago.

Looking to the future by going back to nature

Biomimicry uses nature’s ingenious designs in advanced and sustainable technologies, writes SARAH WILD in The Weekender of 1 August 2009.

“Ever wondered how geckos run across a ceiling without falling off? Or how the prairies survived for thousands of years without soil erosion or colonies of pests?

Biomimeticists think about questions like these. Biomimicry is studying nature, understanding how it works and using it as a model for our designs.”

Read the full article here…

Design inspired by nature – Biomimicry talks

Janine Benyus, the world renowned author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature and the Chair of the Biomimicry Institute, will be giving public lectures in Cape Town and Johannesburg on 27 August and 9 September respectively. Cindy Gilbert the Director of Education at Biomimicry Institute will also give a lecture in Stellenbosch on 27 August.

	CAPE TOWN LECTURE	STELLENBOSCH LECTURE	JOHANNESBURG LECTURE
DATE:	27 August 2009, 17:30	27 August 2009, 17:30	9 September 2009, 17:30
VENUE:	Townhouse Hotel, 60 Corporation Street	Con de Villiers Hall (room A201), JC Smuts Building, Merriman Avenue	Hyatt Regency Hotel, 191 Oxford Road, Rosebank
COST:*	R228	Free	R228

* Student fee = R50

To book for any of these events please contact Magda de Kok on 021 469 4765 or magda.dekok@cpsl.cam.ac.uk

Biomimicry is the process of learning from and then emulating Nature’s genius to create more sustainable designs. It’s studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell or an electric eel to make a better battery.

“Biomimicry introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but what we can learn from it.” – Janine Benyus

Why emulate nature?
Because organisms and ecosystems face the same challenges that we humans do, but they meet those challenges sustainably. More than 30 million species, represent a deep reservoir of wisdom – blueprints, recipes and strategies for how to live gracefuly in place, in ways that create conditions conducive to life.

Here is a video of a talk Janine gave at the 2005 TED conference

SA Biomimicry Workshop

Here is an amazing opportunity for anyone in the design, engineering, environment and sustainability world! A 6-day Biomimicry workshop presented by Janine Benyus and Dr. Dayna Baumeister.

From 30 August – 6 September you can join these these world renowned experts at the Leshiba Wilderness in the Limpo Valley near Kruger National Park, South Africa.

You can also download the official brochure and application form here. Closing date for application is 1st July 2009.

CPSL is also organising public lectures in Cape Town on 27th August and in Johannesburg on 9th September – please see our website for more details

More information on the presenters:

Janine Benyus

• United Nations Environment Programme’s 2009 Champion of the Earth for Science & Innovation
• Time magazine’s Hero of the Environment award
• Biologist, Innovation Consultant
• Author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

Dr. Dayna Baumeister

• Co-founder of The Biomimicry Guild
• MS in Resource Conservation and a PhD in Organismic Biology and Ecology from the University of Montana
• 11 years as a biomimicry educator, researcher and design consultant

Visit www.biomimicryinstitute.org for more information.