BIOMIMICRY IN URBAN DESIGN : CITIES AS SUSTAINABLE ECOSYSTEMS

Abstract

Biomimicry is an emergent design approach that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested ideas. The vision is to create products, processes, organizations, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long period of time. As the industrial age moves into the biological age, modern scientific techniques are allowing us to gaze deeper into nature’s secrets and helping us understand and learn from nature’s refined and elegant designs. Biomimicry can be used to solve many problems which humans face in the fields of medicine, transportation, architecture and construction, energy, product design, computer science and network systems management. The science of biomimicry is a newly developing field but truly the application of biomimicry has been around since the beginning of man. The infinite invention and sophistication of the natural world can inspire a new generation of innovative biomimetic applications in many areas including urban design. There are growing evidences that an environmental and an energy crisis of global proportion are inevitable. Major climatic changes and fierce competition for oil supply become apparent global issues for any cities in the world. As most of the world’s population now lives in the city, there is an urgent need to reintegrate cities and their residents with nature and to learn from nature’s principles as opposed to extracting resources from nature. Cities should be planned with nature’s organizing principles in mind. This research objective is to examine how traditional cities respond to climate and also compare their sustainable principles against biomimicry principles. By comparing historical perspective with nature perspective towards its environment, perhaps there are common principles that both traditional sustainable and biomimicry principles share that can be employed to solve today’s environmental planning issues.