How Can Your Engineers Use a Biomimetic Approach to Your Next Project?
New buildings are popping up across the Australian landscape on a daily basis as populations grow and demand increases. Due to this demand and the ever-present risk to the environment, engineers are constantly on the lookout for new ways to construct these buildings by using a variety of innovative resources and materials. What's one of the most exciting approaches being taken today, with an eye truly to the future?
Sustainability in Development
Sustainability is more than a buzzword, and the construction industry is wholeheartedly embracing the concept, driving new industry trends and innovative projects. More and more builders are seeking out state-of-the-art LEED certifications to increase environmental and social impact, while also chasing cost effectiveness. In turn, these buildings have grown from being perhaps one-in-a-hundred to becoming the new norm as architects and engineers scramble to incorporate the latest thinking.
Looking at Biomimicry
Yet while green rooftops, huge solar arrays and other novelties make some of the headlines, other engineers are busy pushing the industry towards the next level of sustainable innovation. Building design is beginning to take on elements of biology and nature in a new process known as biomimicry.
Designers here look to nature. They study the make-up and habits of the tiniest insect, or the most humble plant, and learn how they have adapted their development over the centuries, in order to live within the environment all around them. The idea is to use these natural ideas and produce them on a commercial level, in order to provide benefits to the human race.
For example, a membrane called aquaporin was uncovered at the end of the last century and is determined to be one of nature's most productive filters. The make-up of the membrane was fully studied and subsequently developed into an application for the desalination of seawater, proving to be highly efficient.
Keep an Eye on the Future
It is felt that biomimicry will provide a growing number of new materials that will directly impact how engineers, architects and designers construct new buildings in Australia. Through a better understanding of natural systems, the aim is to reduce total energy usage and to ensure that the footprint of each new building is justified, cost-effective and efficient.
Ask your engineers how natural elements can be incorporated into your next development project and see if you can be on the cutting edge of biomimicry as it unfolds across the country.