Biomimicry in design: examples and the systems level
Biomimicry is design that copies how living things solve problems. Biologist Janine Benyus popularized the term in 1997. The premise is simple: nature has run design experiments for billions of years and the survivors already work.
Most biomimicry copies a single shape or surface. The harder, more valuable work happens at the system level, where a whole place or organization is designed to behave like a living ecosystem. This guide starts with the well-known examples and moves to the harder system-level work, where the field is still figuring things out.
What is biomimicry?
Biomimicry is the practice of studying a strategy in nature, then translating it into human design. The word joins the Greek bios, life, and mimesis, to imitate. It applies to products, materials, buildings and whole systems. The discipline matters as much as the inspiration. Biomimicry pulls out the principle behind a natural strategy, then tests the result against how nature performs.
What are some examples of biomimicry?
Biomimicry shows up across many fields. A handful of examples have become famous.
In transport, Japan's Shinkansen bullet train took its long nose from the kingfisher, a bird that enters water with almost no splash. The redesign cut the tunnel boom and let the train run faster on less power.
In materials, Velcro came from the hooks on plant burrs. Self-cleaning paints and fabrics copy the lotus leaf, whose microscopic bumps shed dirt and water. Shark-skin surfaces resist microbes and held about 94 percent less MRSA, a drug-resistant staph bacteria, than smooth surfaces in lab tests. Dry adhesives borrow the tiny hairs on a gecko's feet.
In architecture, the Eastgate Centre in Harare cools itself with airflow modeled on a termite mound, on a fraction of the usual energy.
In energy, the bumps on a humpback whale's fins, called tubercles, inspired turbine and fan blades that move air and water more efficiently.
In water, the Namib desert beetle collects fog on its bumpy shell, a trick now copied by surfaces that harvest drinking water in dry places.
Notice that these examples are not all doing the same thing. Some borrow a single shape. Others copy how a whole system behaves. That range is worth naming, because it tells you how far a design has gone.
What are the three levels of biomimicry?
Designers borrow from nature at three levels.
Level | What it copies | Example | What it achieves |
|---|---|---|---|
Form | A shape or structure | Kingfisher beak to train nose | Less drag and noise |
Process | How something works | Termite mound to building airflow | Cooling without air conditioning |
System | How an ecosystem behaves | Forest to a regenerative site | Many functions at once, no waste |
Most work stops at form and process, because they are easier. However, the biggest gains sit at the system level.
What is systems-level biomimicry?
Systems-level biomimicry studies how a healthy ecosystem performs, then designs places and organizations to perform the same way.
A forest cycles water, builds soil, stores carbon and shelters species. It does all of it at once, without waste. A site or a company built on those terms aims to give back more than it takes. That goal has a name: regenerative design.
This is harder than copying a beak. It is also where biomimicry stops being a clever trick and starts reshaping how we plan cities, farms and supply chains.
How does the biomimicry design process work?
The method is straightforward. Start with a function. Cool a building. Clean stormwater. Store carbon. Next, find the organisms or ecosystems that already perform that function well. Pull out the principle behind their strategy and set the biology aside. A termite mound becomes "passively regulated channels that hold a steady temperature using thermal mass and airflow."
Then test your design against the standard a healthy ecosystem would meet. That last step, measuring against nature's performance, is what separates biomimicry from admiring nature.
How does biomimicry connect to nature-based solutions?
Biomimicry is one route into nature-based solutions, the broad set of approaches that use natural systems to solve human problems.
Conservation is moving beyond protecting habitat to rebuilding it. That work is systems work. A city facing heat, a farm rebuilding soil, a coast bracing for bigger storms: each is a system, and nature has tested answers to all of them. Designers who can read those answers and apply them are in short supply.
Going deeper
If you already work in this space, the next step is practice.
ASU's Conservation Futures Academy offers a short course, Applied Biomimicry for Systems Design, that takes you through the full process, from function to a finished design pitch. You build a site concept of your own with an AI-powered design tool. It is taught by Sara El-Sayed, director of ASU's Biomimicry Center. She holds a master's in biomimicry and a doctorate in food system sustainability, and her research weaves the field with Indigenous knowledge systems.
The course runs about five hours, online and self-paced, and ends with a certificate and digital badge. It is one piece of how the Conservation Futures Academy, the professional learning arm of the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures, is building a global conservation workforce.