[Music]
today I want to tell a story about us
and what makes us so different from the
rest of the natural Kingdom because even
though we are natural we do things very
differently I don’t want to focus
specifically on our thoughts and how our
thoughts inform our designs and have
informed how different our designs are
where this all comes from though is a
fear we’re afraid of the unknown that’s
why you don’t like breaking up that’s
like why we don’t like death but we’re
afraid of the complexity of the unknown
and we’re afraid of nature in that way
because cognitively we’re actually not
even capable to understand the complex
reality of nature and we’ll even
simplify our environments to be able to
live within them so let’s think about
death that’s the ultimate unknown and
one of the ways we deal with uncertainty
is we create assumptions a lot of us
assume maybe we’re gonna go to heaven
there might be a couple thinking they’re
going to hell but we make assumptions so
that we can actually deal with that
complexity because we can’t handle it
we’ve also made assumptions in our
designs so for example in Newton we use
Newtonian thinking to take apart nature
put it into pieces and study them in
isolation and then in that isolation
rearrange them to make more predictable
and stable engineered environments we’ve
also built our built our cities on the
assumption that unlimited technology and
unlimited unlimited economic growth is
the key to our well-being embedded in
that you might notice that we also have
assumed there’s unlimited resources and
that nature exists for our consumption
so there’s a couple problems with these
assumptions is that we’ve assumed we’re
different than nature and separate from
nature so we’ve actually built ourselves
separate and different from nature and
there’s one key thing about nature is
that it hates gradients nature will not
naturally spontaneously and coherently
self-organized to dissipate aiding any
gradients and so what we’ve done is
we’ve actually created a gradient
between us in the natural world our
cities are so different and I know
there’s a gradient because if we left
the city nature would take over it’s
just a lot of thermodynamics so the
problem with that well there’s two
problems one it takes a lot of
energy to resist that natural state that
natural flow into our cities so we put a
lot of energy into resisting nature and
to the greater the gradient the greater
the potential for collapse and
reorganization so the bigger and more
cities that we create the more the
gradient
becomes but I’m not really interested in
this idea of larger scale collapse I’m
more interested in how we could shift
our systems by shifting our thinking and
that’s where biomimicry comes in by
definition biomimicry is innovation
inspired by nature one of the most
classic examples is Velcro velcro was
inspired by the birds that stick to your
pants when you’re hiking in the woods it
was invented by a guy in the 40s a swiss
engineer who finally got fed up with
those birds sticking to his dog hair and
he took it under microscope and copied
that hooking mechanism to make one of
the most successful adhesives of our
time
another very commonly presented example
by macri’s whale power here engineers
and were inspired by the bumps of the
humpback whale fin and they copied those
bumps and applied it to a wind turbine
blade and found that this blade runs 20%
more efficient at slower wind speeds and
quieter than traditional blades so
what’s cool is that we recognize
nature’s been doing design for billions
of years and it’s actually evolving the
designs to be the most efficient and
but biomimicry is about shifting our
perception and recognizing that we do
build with assumptions and have been
building with assumptions and then also
recognizing that nature also designs in
the very same context as us so my
paradigm shifted in 2004 when I was an
engineering student at Queen’s
University and I took this a-level ected
called math and poetry I thought it was
gonna be the math of poetry but it was
really just math and then an hour and a
half of poetry but the math teacher well
both teachers were building the math
teacher was really good at dealing with
her delicate egos and he had us actually
believe we were coming up with these
theorems so does anyone know what this
one is Fibonacci right on so the
Fibonacci sequence is just a sequence of
numbers that when you add the two
numbers before the third you get the
third so 0 plus 1 is 1 1 plus 1 is 2 1 1
plus 2 is 3 and so on and then he had us
play with the geometries and shapes of
these cubes so one by one cube and a one
by one cube actually fit beside that 2×2
cube so we made this beautiful rectangle
called the golden ratio we didn’t make
it we thought we did and then he had us
explore what if we connected those
rectangles we got this beautiful spiral
he says well where have you seen this
before what about here
what about here what about in the
packaging the seed packaging of a
sunflower
or what about in the way that waves
crash and fluids naturally flow you see
this spiral is ubiquitous in nature even
our skin pores follow that same pattern
and so we discussed this way the way
that architects and designers have used
this spiral in this golden ratio in
their art and in their designs and we
talked about this natural relationship
we have with it because we are in nature
humans came from nature so we have this
attraction to this form because it’s so
ubiquitous we also talked about some of
the most beautiful people in the world
and how some of their ratios in their
face actually fit the Fibonacci sequence
so here I was an engineer learning about
nature and learning that nature does
design in it fundamentally shifted my
thinking all of a sudden all the math
and science I was learning to engineer
the environment I realized the
environments already doing engineering
and we could learn a lot from it
so I got obsessed and pursued this
biomimicry passion right up until a PhD
and through my PhD and when I finished
my dad is very practical farming he said
okay jaimé now show me what biomimicry
is and that inspired me to apply it and
to practice the application so I’ve
partnered with Jay Harmon down in
California and his company PACs
scientific so PAC scientific has made
this impeller and what is beautiful
about this impeller is that it pulls
fluids rather than pushes them so it’s a
much more efficient at moving fluids at
mixing fluids than a traditional fan and
thence a lot quieter and why it’s more
efficient is because he’s actually
understood how fluids flow so what’s
crazy about nature is that they will
shape their forms to whatever the flows
around it in form it to do it’s not
trying to force anything it’s letting
nature inform the design do you think of
kelp and the way it’ll curl in a
crashing wave it’ll curl because it’s
trying to resist getting pulled up so
this can move 10 million gallons of
water with the electricity of two
lightbulbs
I’ve also partner with Tridel a condo
developer to have us rethink walls so as
an art piece we’ve developed something
based on Chow Jen who’s a designer in
Amsterdam
because when you think of walls a good
engineering wall is one that’s
predictable its stable it comes from
that old paradigm of resistance but
think about a wall in nature it could be
your skin and skid can grow it can shed
it can expand sweat grow hair it’s so
responsive to its environment even at
the local scale this part of my skin is
behaving differently than this one so
this wall this art piece is inspired by
the pine cone and the way that pine
cones will close when it’s wet to avoid
dropping its seeds and open when it’s
dry and Chow is copied this mechanism
without using electricity or any
mechanical devices a wall that opens and
closed just because of moisture and rain
with b plus h architects i helped design
a house in india which is crazy but we
use biomimicry technologies and
principles in the house specifically for
passive ventilation so we were inspired
by the elephant and the barrel cactus
the elephants interesting because those
skin pores those ridges actually hold
moisture in over longer periods of time
so in the heat of the day it can
evapotranspiration of cool the organism
over longer periods the barrel cactus
has those ridges which creates a natural
shading so it creates these little micro
climates inside those ridges that will
pull the hot air away from them from the
barrel cactus and now I’m working with
designers architects and planners to
reimagine our cities and communities
starting to get away from that idea of
separation and build from a non
separation paradigm and integrate nature
back into our designs both in terms of
how we think in biomimicry but also in
through biophilic design as well
so here we’re reimagining what our
cities could be imagine our cities
function like a forest each tree is
automatically an autonomously changing
to its environment picking up
information all of the time and changing
and making adaptations at small scales
imagine our buildings could do that
could self heal could breathe could
respond to winter and summer imagine we
had local patches decentralized services
so we didn’t have to rely on this system
of importation and exportation or
imagine creating economies like an
ecosystem it’s interesting if you think
of a forest there isn’t a tree that’s
600 feet above the rest this paradigm of
growth growth growth survival the
fittest we’re actually learning a lot
about nature and it’s a lot a lot more
cooperative than we realize for example
there’s things called mother trees and
mother trees will grow and get enough of
their resources and once they have
enough they’ll actually start to
distribute information and resources to
other trees and other species even
competing Spees species the other thing
about nature is that there’s no such
thing as waste and everything is working
so imagine creating a waste circular
economy where the waste stream of one
industry is actually the product of
another one closing the loop or imagine
making materials like nature and
manufacturing like me like nature the
spider still has a strength to weight
ratio unlike anything we’ve ever made as
humans but the crazy thing is that
spiders making it a body temperature and
pressure using only the energy of the
Sun and it’s fully recyclable or imagine
creating color like peacocks instead of
using pigment pigmentation and dyes and
chemicals he uses structure to reflect
so the cool thing is this is already
happening there’s already self-healing
concrete and it’s because technologies
are emerging at this time or it’s an
incredible time we have incredible
technologies like 3d and 4d printing
additive manufacturing computational
architecture Big Data this stuff makes
some of these crazy ideas real and for
the next generation you have this
incredible opportunity Dell put out a
study last year saying that 85% of the
jobs that will exist in 2030 do not
exist today there’s a huge
transformation taking place in the next
generation are actually going to be
so I inspired that next generation to
because the world is changing and I
inspire you to start to think about what
makes you come alive because we’re all
in natural at something
to do biomimicry you really have to get
into a new paradigm because it’s
confronting this old way of doing things
that we’ve inherited and become very
accustomed to so you really have to tap
into your creative potential tap into
your flow or what I call inner
biomimicry
and start to dance with nature start to
figure out how we can leverage nature
and participate with nature in harmony
so there’s two things I love about this
photo one that’s my buddy in the front
well Lisa’s feet and two we’re actually
paddling in the wrong direction what we
were doing is we’re surfing a little
standing wave there in the front and
this is it’s this incredible feeling
where if you get your canoe in the right
spot you don’t even have to paddle
anymore you just surf the wave and you
have this euphoric feeling of being in
total harmony with the power of nature I
mean the indigenous people in Hawaii
knew this that’s why surfing was such a
spiritual practice because you’re on the
precipice between chaos and this
incredible power so imagine we had a
place where we can explore creating in
harmony with nature and actually
designing with a new paradigm and
this is what we’re doing in Guelph we
have something called the biomimicry
Commons and it’s a disruptor and
incubator space for the next generation
of technologies and thinking and I
inspire every community to have one of
these and it doesn’t a lot of people ask
me how do i do biomimicry where do i do
biomimicry and i think the best thing to
say for now is just change your thoughts
and start to create recognizing that
nature does design and start to
challenge those philosophies that we do
design with because if you don’t know
what your philosophy is when you’re
designing you’re probably just relying
on the status quo
the way I see it it’s like a car and
their philosophy is a steering wheel and
if you’re not conscious of the steering
wheel you’re in big trouble and even
Einstein said we can’t solve today’s
problems with the thinking of the past
so be aware of your thoughts because in
my mind your thoughts are everything
what we’ve built is a reflection of our
thoughts I even believe that nature is a
reflection of our thoughts so tap into
your inner biomimicry and recognize that
when you change your thoughts you can
change the entire world thank you very much
today I want to tell a story about us
and what makes us so different from the
rest of the natural Kingdom because even
though we are natural we do things very
differently I don’t want to focus
specifically on our thoughts and how our
thoughts inform our designs and have
informed how different our designs are
where this all comes from though is a
fear we’re afraid of the unknown that’s
why you don’t like breaking up that’s
like why we don’t like death but we’re
afraid of the complexity of the unknown
and we’re afraid of nature in that way
because cognitively we’re actually not
even capable to understand the complex
reality of nature and we’ll even
simplify our environments to be able to
live within them so let’s think about
death that’s the ultimate unknown and
one of the ways we deal with uncertainty
is we create assumptions a lot of us
assume maybe we’re gonna go to heaven
there might be a couple thinking they’re
going to hell but we make assumptions so
that we can actually deal with that
complexity because we can’t handle it
we’ve also made assumptions in our
designs so for example in Newton we use
Newtonian thinking to take apart nature
put it into pieces and study them in
isolation and then in that isolation
rearrange them to make more predictable
and stable engineered environments we’ve
also built our built our cities on the
assumption that unlimited technology and
unlimited unlimited economic growth is
the key to our well-being embedded in
that you might notice that we also have
assumed there’s unlimited resources and
that nature exists for our consumption
so there’s a couple problems with these
assumptions is that we’ve assumed we’re
different than nature and separate from
nature so we’ve actually built ourselves
separate and different from nature and
there’s one key thing about nature is
that it hates gradients nature will not
naturally spontaneously and coherently
self-organized to dissipate aiding any
gradients and so what we’ve done is
we’ve actually created a gradient
between us in the natural world our
cities are so different and I know
there’s a gradient because if we left
the city nature would take over it’s
just a lot of thermodynamics so the
problem with that well there’s two
problems one it takes a lot of
energy to resist that natural state that
natural flow into our cities so we put a
lot of energy into resisting nature and
to the greater the gradient the greater
the potential for collapse and
reorganization so the bigger and more
cities that we create the more the
gradient
becomes but I’m not really interested in
this idea of larger scale collapse I’m
more interested in how we could shift
our systems by shifting our thinking and
that’s where biomimicry comes in by
definition biomimicry is innovation
inspired by nature one of the most
classic examples is Velcro velcro was
inspired by the birds that stick to your
pants when you’re hiking in the woods it
was invented by a guy in the 40s a swiss
engineer who finally got fed up with
those birds sticking to his dog hair and
he took it under microscope and copied
that hooking mechanism to make one of
the most successful adhesives of our
time
another very commonly presented example
by macri’s whale power here engineers
and were inspired by the bumps of the
humpback whale fin and they copied those
bumps and applied it to a wind turbine
blade and found that this blade runs 20%
more efficient at slower wind speeds and
quieter than traditional blades so
what’s cool is that we recognize
nature’s been doing design for billions
of years and it’s actually evolving the
designs to be the most efficient and
but biomimicry is about shifting our
perception and recognizing that we do
build with assumptions and have been
building with assumptions and then also
recognizing that nature also designs in
the very same context as us so my
paradigm shifted in 2004 when I was an
engineering student at Queen’s
University and I took this a-level ected
called math and poetry I thought it was
gonna be the math of poetry but it was
really just math and then an hour and a
half of poetry but the math teacher well
both teachers were building the math
teacher was really good at dealing with
her delicate egos and he had us actually
believe we were coming up with these
theorems so does anyone know what this
one is Fibonacci right on so the
Fibonacci sequence is just a sequence of
numbers that when you add the two
numbers before the third you get the
third so 0 plus 1 is 1 1 plus 1 is 2 1 1
plus 2 is 3 and so on and then he had us
play with the geometries and shapes of
these cubes so one by one cube and a one
by one cube actually fit beside that 2×2
cube so we made this beautiful rectangle
called the golden ratio we didn’t make
it we thought we did and then he had us
explore what if we connected those
rectangles we got this beautiful spiral
he says well where have you seen this
before what about here
what about here what about in the
packaging the seed packaging of a
sunflower
or what about in the way that waves
crash and fluids naturally flow you see
this spiral is ubiquitous in nature even
our skin pores follow that same pattern
and so we discussed this way the way
that architects and designers have used
this spiral in this golden ratio in
their art and in their designs and we
talked about this natural relationship
we have with it because we are in nature
humans came from nature so we have this
attraction to this form because it’s so
ubiquitous we also talked about some of
the most beautiful people in the world
and how some of their ratios in their
face actually fit the Fibonacci sequence
so here I was an engineer learning about
nature and learning that nature does
design in it fundamentally shifted my
thinking all of a sudden all the math
and science I was learning to engineer
the environment I realized the
environments already doing engineering
and we could learn a lot from it
so I got obsessed and pursued this
biomimicry passion right up until a PhD
and through my PhD and when I finished
my dad is very practical farming he said
okay jaimé now show me what biomimicry
is and that inspired me to apply it and
to practice the application so I’ve
partnered with Jay Harmon down in
California and his company PACs
scientific so PAC scientific has made
this impeller and what is beautiful
about this impeller is that it pulls
fluids rather than pushes them so it’s a
much more efficient at moving fluids at
mixing fluids than a traditional fan and
thence a lot quieter and why it’s more
efficient is because he’s actually
understood how fluids flow so what’s
crazy about nature is that they will
shape their forms to whatever the flows
around it in form it to do it’s not
trying to force anything it’s letting
nature inform the design do you think of
kelp and the way it’ll curl in a
crashing wave it’ll curl because it’s
trying to resist getting pulled up so
this can move 10 million gallons of
water with the electricity of two
lightbulbs
I’ve also partner with Tridel a condo
developer to have us rethink walls so as
an art piece we’ve developed something
based on Chow Jen who’s a designer in
Amsterdam
because when you think of walls a good
engineering wall is one that’s
predictable its stable it comes from
that old paradigm of resistance but
think about a wall in nature it could be
your skin and skid can grow it can shed
it can expand sweat grow hair it’s so
responsive to its environment even at
the local scale this part of my skin is
behaving differently than this one so
this wall this art piece is inspired by
the pine cone and the way that pine
cones will close when it’s wet to avoid
dropping its seeds and open when it’s
dry and Chow is copied this mechanism
without using electricity or any
mechanical devices a wall that opens and
closed just because of moisture and rain
with b plus h architects i helped design
a house in india which is crazy but we
use biomimicry technologies and
principles in the house specifically for
passive ventilation so we were inspired
by the elephant and the barrel cactus
the elephants interesting because those
skin pores those ridges actually hold
moisture in over longer periods of time
so in the heat of the day it can
evapotranspiration of cool the organism
over longer periods the barrel cactus
has those ridges which creates a natural
shading so it creates these little micro
climates inside those ridges that will
pull the hot air away from them from the
barrel cactus and now I’m working with
designers architects and planners to
reimagine our cities and communities
starting to get away from that idea of
separation and build from a non
separation paradigm and integrate nature
back into our designs both in terms of
how we think in biomimicry but also in
through biophilic design as well
so here we’re reimagining what our
cities could be imagine our cities
function like a forest each tree is
automatically an autonomously changing
to its environment picking up
information all of the time and changing
and making adaptations at small scales
imagine our buildings could do that
could self heal could breathe could
respond to winter and summer imagine we
had local patches decentralized services
so we didn’t have to rely on this system
of importation and exportation or
imagine creating economies like an
ecosystem it’s interesting if you think
of a forest there isn’t a tree that’s
600 feet above the rest this paradigm of
growth growth growth survival the
fittest we’re actually learning a lot
about nature and it’s a lot a lot more
cooperative than we realize for example
there’s things called mother trees and
mother trees will grow and get enough of
their resources and once they have
enough they’ll actually start to
distribute information and resources to
other trees and other species even
competing Spees species the other thing
about nature is that there’s no such
thing as waste and everything is working
so imagine creating a waste circular
economy where the waste stream of one
industry is actually the product of
another one closing the loop or imagine
making materials like nature and
manufacturing like me like nature the
spider still has a strength to weight
ratio unlike anything we’ve ever made as
humans but the crazy thing is that
spiders making it a body temperature and
pressure using only the energy of the
Sun and it’s fully recyclable or imagine
creating color like peacocks instead of
using pigment pigmentation and dyes and
chemicals he uses structure to reflect
so the cool thing is this is already
happening there’s already self-healing
concrete and it’s because technologies
are emerging at this time or it’s an
incredible time we have incredible
technologies like 3d and 4d printing
additive manufacturing computational
architecture Big Data this stuff makes
some of these crazy ideas real and for
the next generation you have this
incredible opportunity Dell put out a
study last year saying that 85% of the
jobs that will exist in 2030 do not
exist today there’s a huge
transformation taking place in the next
generation are actually going to be
so I inspired that next generation to
because the world is changing and I
inspire you to start to think about what
makes you come alive because we’re all
in natural at something
to do biomimicry you really have to get
into a new paradigm because it’s
confronting this old way of doing things
that we’ve inherited and become very
accustomed to so you really have to tap
into your creative potential tap into
your flow or what I call inner
biomimicry
and start to dance with nature start to
figure out how we can leverage nature
and participate with nature in harmony
so there’s two things I love about this
photo one that’s my buddy in the front
well Lisa’s feet and two we’re actually
paddling in the wrong direction what we
were doing is we’re surfing a little
standing wave there in the front and
this is it’s this incredible feeling
where if you get your canoe in the right
spot you don’t even have to paddle
anymore you just surf the wave and you
have this euphoric feeling of being in
total harmony with the power of nature I
mean the indigenous people in Hawaii
knew this that’s why surfing was such a
spiritual practice because you’re on the
precipice between chaos and this
incredible power so imagine we had a
place where we can explore creating in
harmony with nature and actually
designing with a new paradigm and
this is what we’re doing in Guelph we
have something called the biomimicry
Commons and it’s a disruptor and
incubator space for the next generation
of technologies and thinking and I
inspire every community to have one of
these and it doesn’t a lot of people ask
me how do i do biomimicry where do i do
biomimicry and i think the best thing to
say for now is just change your thoughts
and start to create recognizing that
nature does design and start to
challenge those philosophies that we do
design with because if you don’t know
what your philosophy is when you’re
designing you’re probably just relying
on the status quo
the way I see it it’s like a car and
their philosophy is a steering wheel and
if you’re not conscious of the steering
wheel you’re in big trouble and even
Einstein said we can’t solve today’s
problems with the thinking of the past
so be aware of your thoughts because in
my mind your thoughts are everything
what we’ve built is a reflection of our
thoughts I even believe that nature is a
reflection of our thoughts so tap into
your inner biomimicry and recognize that
when you change your thoughts you can
change the entire world thank you very much
Please follow and like us: