Learn from Nature: 9 Benefits of Blending Biomimicry and the Built Environment

Register at prairielab.com/immersion!

There's so much we can LEARN from NATURE! Join us for the last in our series of immersive, biomimicry-inspired workshops at The Morton Arboretum​ on October 17th. Learn from nature's strategies to create more resilient and sustainable buildings and communities while earning up to 8 CEUs. 

Still on the fence about how learning from nature can improve your design practice and project value? Check out instructor Amy Coffman Phillips' article on "9 benefits of blending biomimicry and the built environment," featured on greenbiz.com!

You can't miss this last one! 

Register today at prairielab.com/immersion and enter promo code "BIOCHI10" for 10% off the cost or registration!

Celebrate Autumn on the Prairie!

Register at prairielab.com/immersion today!

Celebrate today's Autumnal Equinox by registering for our LAST Immersive Biomimicry Workshop of the year! On October 17th, take a walk through the prairie at the Morton Arboretum as it prepares for winter and learn how biomimicry can help you design more resilient businesses and communities. Visit prairielab.com/immersion for more information and enter promo code BIOCHI10 for 10% off the cost of registration.

Call for Entries: A NEW Biomimicry Scholarship for Emerging Professionals!

Biomimicry Chicago is once again proud to sponsor a scholarship to the upcoming Chicago Biomimicry Immersion experience at the Morton Arboretum, brought to you by our partners at Prairie Lab, LLC! Prize includes one seat at the October 17th workshop, a $225 value worth 4 CEUs.

Submission Guidelines

To enter, submit an original work that describes how you plan to integrate biomimicry into your chosen career. The original work can be anything of your choosing (a blog entry, short essay, photo, drawing, or video), but should include your response to the question: "What will I ask nature?"

In the contact form to the right, please enter your name, email, and add your age, profession, and the school or company affiliation in the message box. Submit all original works to biomimicrychicago@gmail.com by October 5th to be eligible to win. By submitting an original work, you grant Biomimicry Chicago the permission to post your work to our blog and social media.

Good luck and we are excited to see what you produce!

Not an emerging professional? No problem! Visit prairielab.com/immersion to learn more and be sure to enter promo code "BIOCHI10" for 10% off the cost of registration!

Back to School = Back to Nature!

Join our friends at #PrairieLab for the next in their seasonal biomimicry workshops and explore our native ecosystems while applying biomimicry methodology to your next design challenge.

BioBrainstorm! Emulating Nature’s Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Design
Morton Arboretum
Saturday, August 22nd
10:00am - 2:30pm

Enter promo code BioChi10 for 10% off the cost of registration and to support our network.
prairielab.com/immersion

Discovering the Prairie!

Immersive education via Prairie Lab, LLC

Our partners at Prairie Lab held their second immersive biomimicry workshop at the Morton Arboretum on a gorgeous day in June. Check out their blog post showing pictures of the experience! And be sure to register for the next experience in August where we will explore the oak woodlands and practice generating innovative new ideas during a Design Jam.

Saturday, August 22nd.
Register today!

Take a #biomimicry & #biophilia walk THIS WEDNESDAY at the Lurie Garden!

We are following up our amazing AIA Chicago event "Bio-What?!?" with a tour of the Lurie Garden THIS WEDNESDAY, July 8th. Join us at 5:45pm as we discuss "The Science Behind the Beauty" and then head over to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion for the Grant Park Music Festival!

FREE to AIA members and $15 to all others, but space is limited, so register today!
http://www.aiachicago.org/eve…/the-science-behind-the-beauty

Nine Reasons Why Applying Biomimicry to Built Environment Projects is a Win-Win-Win!

Photo: Zlicovek, Shutterstock

Biomimicry Chicago co-founder, Amy Coffman Phillips, was recently asked to contribute to the Biomimicry Institute's new blog, Asking Nature. Check out her thoughts on "Nine Reasons Why Applying Biomimicry to Built Environment Projects is a Win-Win-Win!"

"Designers in the building industry are continually looking for new and innovative ways to create beautiful, livable spaces that are environmentally responsible and resilient. Increasingly, those on the leading edge are looking to nature as a source of inspiration. Here are nine examples of how applying biomimicry in the context of the built environment can help designers, projects, and communities as they work to create naturally sustainable, inherently resilient spaces."

Curious to learn more? Check out the next Chicago Biomimicry Immersive Workshop THIS SATURDAY! Enter promo code 'BioChi10' for 10% off the cost of registration!




http://biomimicry.org/next-design-innovation-built-environment-learning-nature/

Announcing the WINNER of the Chicago Biomimicry Immersion Scholarship!

Congratulations to recent graduate Brian Cabinian on winning the Chicago Biomimicry Immersion Scholarship for June 2015! Brian impressed the jurors with his curiosity and clear articulation of how the field of biomimicry will improve his career path. 

Brian Cabinian graduated the University of Illinois in May 2015 with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and currently works at the Construction Engineering Research Lab in Champaign, Illinois on water treatment systems. In Fall 2015, he will be attending graduate school at the University of California - Santa Barbara to pursue a PhD in Materials Science.

A special thank you to jurors Peter Nicholson, Rachel Hahs, Amy Coffman Phillips, Michelle Halle Stern, and Joseph Clair for their help in selecting from an amazing group of candidates! 

Don't forget to register for the next Immersion on Saturday, June 27th, and enter promo code 'BioChi10' for 10% off the cost of registration and to help support the work of Biomimicry Chicago!

Brian's winning essay: 

How do you solve the world’s toughest engineering problems? Ask nature.

I wasn't really a nature lover as a child. I didn't like laying in the grass for too long, bugs gave me (and still kind of do) the heebee-jeebee's, and I practiced clarinet instead of playing outside when I went to visit my grandfather's farm. My disregard for nature shifted though after I discovered biomimicry. I first heard about the concept through one of Janine Benyus's TED talks and I became obsessed with this idea of how innovators like Joanna Aizenberg at the Harvard Wyss Institute were using the natural world to push out better, more efficient, stronger, sustainable products. With that, you couldn't stop me from imagining and searching for all sorts of ways that nature had bested man made technology.

What I did enjoy as a child and what I've thrived in later in life, however, is solving problems, which I think is why I ended up as an engineer - specifically a Materials Engineer. I work at the Construction Engineering Research Lab in Champaign, Illinois. Working on problems that will hopefully lead to technology that improves daily life is extraordinarily satisfying and as you solve each problem you begin to challenge yourself more and more. The greatest engineering challenge we face today is the challenge of sustainable living: how do we re-engineer our way of life, our society, and our technology, so that, as Elon Musk said in a recent keynote speech, we don't "try to win the Darwin Award." In other words: how do we stop using up our limited resources, stop driving away eco-diversity, and maintain the environment that sustains our species. As I've tossed and turned this problem around in my head, one solution sticks out more than any other: can we imitate the natural world to a point where we can integrate our lives in the boundaries of life's natural limits? I think Biomimicry supplies a hefty guide to many engineering challenges of our day and for that reason I hope to integrate this thinking into my future career.

As a materials engineer, I'm extremely interested in how we make, or synthesize, the products we find in our daily lives. Consider your cell phone: the microchips in there are etched and patterned and smoothed to make a device that lasts for a very long time. What's interesting about this process is that so much material and energy is input to create a product that cannot be reintegrated into the natural world. Thus, I want to understand how nature uses closed cycles to ensure that resources continue to be useable over and over again. The answer to this question applies not just to materials but to many other areas of engineering, such as waste water management, food supply lines, etc. It's this question and many others that I hope to explore through the Biomimicry Immersion program at the Morton Arboretum.

Chicago Biomimicry Immersion Scholarship Finalist Announced!

Brittany Boelter is a finalist for the Chicago Biomimicry Immersion Scholarship and submitted her thesis integrating biomimicry and biophilia into the design of a Living Learning Center within Marquette Park in Gary, Indiana. View the full original work here!

Marquette Living Learning Center Boardwalk, Boelter

In Brittany's own words, "I ask nature how the built environment can inform and coincide with nature and natural ecosystems to engage, teach, inspire and grow for the success of the natural environment and the stewardship of future generations. I ask those questions, of course, but I also try to find the best possible solution for those questions. Therefore, within this book, I have proposed a Living Learning Center within Marquette Park in Gary, Indiana. I have used my studies of the Indiana dunes and its parabolic formations to inform the built environment and learning experiences on the site which is currently a large parking infrastructure. The current situation does not allow for the many ecosystems to follow their natural processes. I believe my solution and answer to the questions allows those ecosystems to continue their natural processes and movements, while also, creating a light boardwalk and built environment that informs, educates, and inspires the public and future generations on the current ecosystems and history of the site."

Marquette Living Learning Center Outdoor Terrace, Boelter

Marquette Living Learning Center Sun Experience, Boelter

Guest Bloggers! "Biomimicry as a Neighborhood Planning Tool"

Guest bloggers Moira Albanese and Sydney Blankers recently completed a joint Master’s Project, entitled ‘Biomimicry as a Neighborhood Planning Tool’, at the University of Illinois at Chicago and were awarded the 2015 Best Master's Project in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at UIC. 

"Biomimicry as a Neighborhood Planning Tool," Albanese & Blankers

Nature is a problem solver. For over 3.8 billion years, life has struggled to survive, to adapt, to evolve. For our Master’s capstone project, we asked: how does nature deal with boundaries? And how does nature deal with waste? Can nature’s solutions be translated into urban environments?

Boundaries

Large thoroughfares of cities create physical and mental borders between neighborhoods. The way we currently plan for cities leads to the concept of a “wrong side of the tracks”. There is a place in Chicago where this street-as-border is quite evident: the stretch of Western Avenue between Humboldt Park and Wicker Park Bucktown. Both communities have active neighborhood groups and strong ties to their history, but the demographic inequalities are stark. Housing prices, educational attainment, and income are strikingly different from one side of the street to the other, with Western Ave. a dead zone in between.

How does nature deal with boundaries?
Nature prefers gradual change from one environment to another. Overlapping areas between biomes, such as the prairie and the forest, are called ecotones. Ecotones are areas of constant flux, but they are also resilient in the face of external stressors. The heterogeneity of the resource base of the ecotone is what makes it robust. Precisely because it is a mix of the two different environments, and not a homogenous set of resources that would be more vulnerable to threats, it can adapt to changing conditions without sacrificing its uniqueness. What would our cities look like if they were planned to allow for gradual change between different neighborhoods? How could inequalities be normalized if we were to follow nature’s design?

Waste

Garbage is a problem that is easily forgotten in today’s busy world. A certain amount of waste production is assumed, and the optimal solution is to find a place to dispose of the refuse. New technologies have allowed for more waste to be placed in landfills, but none of those solutions alter the relationship people have to waste or alter the underlying system of waste dynamics. Wicker Park Bucktown constantly battles overflowing street trash cans, which drains community time, money, and energy. 

How is waste dealt with in nature?
Nature deals with waste within local limits. Feedback loops communicate to producers an appropriate amount of waste that the ecosystem can absorb. Waste products for one creature are often a resource for another. Precious materials are coveted and used sparingly. How would our cities function if waste could not be hauled off elsewhere? What “trash” would become precious and what new uses could we find? Looking to natural waste systems as models for human systems can result in novel solutions, leaving both the environment and urban communities healthier.

Learn more!

Nature is full of surprises and solutions. Please follow the link to our full project to learn more about the questions we put to nature, the solutions that she put forth, and the potential therein for our urban environments. 

Thank you.

Moira & Sydney

About the Authors

Moira Albanese is an intern at Foresight Design Initiative and a second-year Masters in Urban Planning and Policy student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University with a major in International Studies and a minor in Linguistics. Her travels and curiosity about the use of cities around the world led her to question American cities, and to think about what could be different. These questions are what drive her to plan the future of cities. 

Sydney Blankers received her Masters in Urban Planning and Policy in 2015 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in Environmental Planning and Policy. She has a B.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell University. Research interests include planning and policy methods that encourage urban environments to ‘tread lighter’ on, and ultimately operate in harmony with, the natural environments they depend on.

The Next Design Innovation: Learning from Nature

The Chicago Biomimicry Immersion

Designers are continually looking for new and innovative ways to create beautiful, livable spaces that are environmentally responsible and, more recently, resilient to disturbances. Increasingly, designers on the leading edge are looking to nature as a source of inspiration.

Will you count yourself among them?

Biomimicry Chicago has partnered with Prairie Lab, LLC, to offer a unique, immersive educational experience. Immerse yourself in nature’s water, energy, waste, and resilience strategies while walking our native ecosystems and exploring the biomimicry innovation toolkit and resources. This training will give you the tools and resources you need to create locally-attuned buildings, communities, and environments that “fit in” again with the ecosystems they inhabit, making the achievement of green building benchmark standards, such as LEED and the Living Building Challenge, intuitive and natural.

The next Immersion is on Saturday, June 27th, from 10am to 2:30pm at the award winning Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois (a suburb west of Chicago and accessible by BNSF Metra). This session is entitled “Learning from Nature: ReDiscovering Natural Inspiration for Innovative Design” and will focus on discovering natural models for well-adapted sustainable design. Get outside on a beautiful summer day and enjoy learning about how nature can be a source of inspiration for your next design project!

Visit prairielab.com/immersion or contact amy@prairielab.com for more information. Be sure to enter 'BIOCHI10' for 10% off the cost of registration and to help support the work of Bioimimicry Chicago.

Thank you!

New Event: Bio-what???

Join us to learn more about #biomimicry, #biophilia, and their potential to improve the built environment! Next Wednesday at AIA Chicago!

WEDNESDAY / MAY 27, 2015 / 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

BIO-WHAT? DEFINING BIOMIMICRY AND BIOPHILIA - CREATING CONNECTIONS TO THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

AIA CHICAGO, 35 EAST WACKER DRIVE, #250

Can you define biomimicry and biophilia with regards to the built environment? Our panel will explore the relationships between the two and their impact on design. How can we learn from and design with nature? This presentation will talk about the process, case studies, and current research surrounding these emerging strategies and you will begin to understand nature’s principles and how they can be applied to design.

We will define biomimicry and biophilia and why these concepts are important in today's built environment and how they are related to regenerative design. We will explore how to apply the principles of biomimicry and biophilia to the design process as well as see how they are connected to different Green Rating Systems in the market today. Presenters John Mlade (YR&G Chicago), Amy Coffman Phillips (Prairie Lab), and Susan Heinking, AIA (Pepper Construction Company) will share resources available to learn more on these subject areas and ways to gain more experience of these strategies around the Chicago area.

FREE for AIA members, $15 for non-members.

Register today!

Observing Life's Principles in the Woods

Photo by Benet Devereux

One of the participants in Prairie Lab's April Biomimicry Immersion, Benet Devereux, wrote a blog entry about Life's Principles he observed when walking through the woods near his home in Wisconsin. Check out his post, "I thought the woods and the world were connected," and see what local biomimics-in-training are thinking about!

Please join us for the next immersion on Saturday, June 27th! Register today!

Biomimicry Scholarship for Emerging Professionals Available!

Biomimicry Chicago is proud to sponsor a scholarship to the upcoming Chicago Biomimicry Immersion experience at the Morton Arboretum, brought to you by our partners at Prairie Lab, LLC! Prize includes one seat at the June 27th workshop, a $225 value worth 4 CEUs.

Submission Guidelines

To enter, submit an original work that describes how you plan to integrate biomimicry into your chosen career. The original work can be anything of your choosing (a blog entry, short essay, photo, drawing, or video), but should include your response to the question: "What will I ask nature?"

In the contact form to the right, please enter your name, email, and add your age, profession, and the school or company affiliation in the message box. Submit all original works to biomimicrychicago@gmail.com by June 8th to be eligible to win. By submitting an original work, you grant Biomimicry Chicago the permission to post your work to our blog and social media.

Good luck and we are excited to see what you produce!

Not an emerging professional? No problem! Visit prairielab.com/immersion to learn more and be sure to enter promo code "BIOCHI10" for 10% off the cost of registration!

How does nature reuse materials?

visit prairielab.com/immersion for more information

It's spring cleanup time! Across our region, people are sweeping out old leaves and branches to make room for new growth. But what happens to leaves in a forest? Are they a waste product to be removed or do they form an intricate component of the soil architecture? Do plants and organisms produce toxic materials that cannot be safely stored in the soil or do their materials safely break down into benign elements? In short, how does nature reuse materials? And what does this mean for material selection in our built environment?

Discover solutions to this and more at the Chicago Biomimicry Immersion, starting next week! April 25th at The Morton Arboretum! Be sure to enter the promo code "BIOCHI10" for 10% off the cost of registration!www.prairielab.com/immersion.

Image and article by Amy Coffman Phillips of The B-Collaborative (cross posted)

On a beautiful day when the sun is shining brightly, have you ever asked yourself, "how does nature optimize energy use?" Do plants dig miles below the earth's surface to pump up fossil sunlight, or does life use the abundant rays that beam to the surface every day? Does energy production in nature result in wasteful by-products or does it actually create conditions conducive to life? What can our built environment learn by asking these questions?

Discover answers to this and more at the Chicago Biomimicry Immersion, starting April 25th at The Morton Arboretum! Be sure to enter the promo code "BIOCHI10" for 10% off the cost of registration! www.prairielab.com/immersion.

How does nature manage stormwater?

Image and article by Amy Coffman Phillips of The B-Collaborative (cross posted)

On a stormy day like today, we remember that water - life giving resource that it is - can cause big problems for the built environment! Maybe you are worried about your basement flooding. Or that your car will get stuck as flash floods cover roadways. Maybe you worry about water infiltrating your building, damaging finishes and inviting mold. The question we must ask is: are these problems inherent in the process of development or are they signs that we are managing stormwater incorrectly? 

Through biomimicry, we can find innovative solutions to this challenge by asking the question: "how does nature manage stormwater?"

As an architect, one of my primary responsibilities is to "keep water out" of buildings. Often, that means finding ways to accelerate the flow of water off the roof and away from the site. We do this with impermeable surfaces, downspouts, drainage channels, drain tile, and much more. The goal is to get water off and away as soon as possible, treating it as a waste product. But in nature, the strategy is the opposite of acceleration, but to slow the flow. Water is slowed in a many ways at a variety of scales. 

Let's think like a forest. 

Canopy trees are the first defense: slowing the fast moving water that falls from the sky and breaking it up into smaller droplets. Then understory trees, shrubs, and ground cover further serve to break apart water drops and slow the flow until they fall to the soil and are readily absorbed by spongy soil architecture. Excess water that is not readily absorbed runs off but is impacted by logs, twigs, rocks, and other obstructions that serve to further slow this acceleration. The result is that only a very small percentage of the water that falls from the sky actually runs off to streams and rivers in intact ecosystems. 

What a difference from our built environment where over half of the water that falls on site is wasted, taking soil and pollution along with it to clog waterways.  

Image courtesy of the EPA via Wikipedia, depicting two different types of built environment. In intact ecosystems, the amount of runoff is many times even less, although it varies by ecosystem type and local conditions. 

Fortunately, architects, planners, city officials, and politicians are realizing that in the process of developing our cities, we have destroyed native ecosystems and the services they provided. Through biomimicry and the "Genius of Place" process, we can begin to reverse this situation and the negative impacts we have created for ourselves. 

It's time to rethink the paradigm of stormwater as a waste product and look to nature for inspiration to make our buildings like trees, our cities like forests.

Discover innovative solutions to this and other challenges at the Chicago Biomimicry Immersion, starting April 25th at The Morton Arboretum! Be sure to enter the promo code "BIOCHI10" for 10% off the cost of registration!

Links for further reading:

• http://biomimicry.org/biomimicry-research-uncovers-nature-inspired-stormwater-solutions/ 
• http://www.urbangreenprint.org/ 
• http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/urban-greenprint-biomimicry-applied-city.html 
• http://issuu.com/hoknetwork/docs/geniusofbiome 

Design Inspiration...

...can come from the most unique and lovely of places.

www.prairielab.com/immersion

Chicago Biomimicry Immersion - 2015!

Biomimicry Chicago has partnered with Prairie Lab, LLC, to offer our followers discounted registration for this year’s Biomimicry Immersion: Chicago-Style! Four experiences, each as unique as our region. Visit prairielab.com/immersion to learn more and register. Be sure to contact us at biomimicrychicago@gmail.com or on twitter @biomimicrychi to receive 10% off the cost of registration!

Permaculturists + Biomimics Team up!

We're kicking off the Global Biomimicry Design Challenge: Food Systems in the Chicago area with a potluck design charrette! Join our favorite permiculturists at The Resiliency Institute in Naperville as they explore how our urban streetscapes can work like food forests through biomimicry! Next Friday, Feb 20th, at 6:30pm. Learn more here!

challenge.biomimicry.org

Upcoming Event: AuthentiCity!

Amy will be speaking at the following event: please join us to learn more about how we can design more sustainable, resilient cities by looking to the Genius of our Place! RSVP here!

5th Annual Urban Innovation Symposium: AuthentiCity

YOU'RE INVITED Friday, January 30, 2015 PLEASE RSVP to participate in the exchange of innovative planning methods and ideas that create authentic city spaces and enliven urban life from the ground up! This two-part event will feature presentations and panel discussions with local strategists who foster places that maintain cities' and neighborhoods' cultural and environmental identities. During the daytime session, from 9:00 AM - 1:00PM at Gallery 400 in UIC's Art and Exhibition Hall,professionals from around the region provide insight into cutting-edge ideas in physical planning, design, housing, and economic development.  CUPPA Dean Michael Pagano will be headlining as our keynote speaker to talk about the Obama Library proposal on UIC's campus.  Rounding out the daytime section will be a panel of urban planners who take to blogging as a way to advocate their points of view, moderated by UIC professor Charles Hoch. At the evening event, from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM at the Royal George Theatre's Black Box Theaterspace, urban professionals deliver presentations in the fast-moving, visually-oriented PechaKucha®  (PK) format in an informal atmosphere, encouraging attendees to get to know each other and enjoy complimentary appetizers and cash bar.   Open and free to the public. RSVP | DAYTIME SESSION RSVP | EVENING SESSION For more information, please visit www.UPPSA.org or e-mail us aturbaninnovatesym@gmail.com

Happy New Year, Biomimicry Chicago!