The new Boeing Dreamliner has barely taken to the skies and Dr Julian Vincent of Bath University’s department of mechanical engineering is nonchalant. According to Vincent, the flagship aircraft – one of the most advanced machines on the planet – is no more technically complex than a human hair.

What’s more, nature employs just two hard-working polymers to create every living thing on the planet – including that hair. An aircraft uses around 350. Most stunningly of all, every reaction and process in nature unfolds at ambient temperature and pressure, using just water as a solvent and creating no waste whatsoever.

But with 3.8 billion years of R&D on her side, it’s no small wonder that mother nature’s designs are unsurpassed by anything man has ever created.

Take a leaf. It is able to harvest and store energy from the sun’s rays and converts CO2 into sugar and oxygen along the way.

Or spider’s silk. It’s three times tougher than the strong synthetic wonder-fibre Kevlar and is stretchy, lightweight and starts with raw material of flies.

As the reality of Peak oil comes into focus and population and water consumption skyrocket, adapting to resource-constrained times is more important than ever.

Sitting in the unexpected overlap between biology and human design, biomimicry, Vincent believes, may hold the key to survival. Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature, writes that it is “a new science that studies nature’s best designs and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.”

And there are few more pertinently problematic design areas today than sustainability.

Where traditional designers see nature as a warehouse and goods, as Benyus puts it, biomimeticists see a teacher and ideas.

In its fundamental form, biomimicry is in fact nothing new. There are examples of ancient architecture that are thought to mimic insect nests, hunting techniques that emulate those of animals and Leonardo da Vinci was a famous proponent.

The resurgence that we are currently witnessing, however, is a long-overdue re-emergence of ingenuity based upon integrating (often old) knowledge with new technology – increasingly in response to climate change. As Michael Pawlyn, designer of the Eden Project and founder of Exploration Architecture, put it in a recent interview, “The carbon age has been a massive distraction. We’ve forgotten how to be ingenious as a species.” To a certain extent, biomimicry has been born out of the technological advancements – and mistakes – we have made so far.

Where Velcro represents biomimicry in its simplest form – a waste-free fastening mechanism that directly copies a sticky burr’s dispersal technique – nanotechnology, for example, is now allowing biomimeticists to effectively grow material rather than assemble it from parts extracted by the wasteful ‘heat, beat and treat’ method that has come to define modern industry.

But some of the best solutions are the most deceptively simple. Certainly, nature starts with a bare minimum of resources and energy, creates no waste and always performs well in context. To have survived on planet earth, you are, in short, adept at adapting.

One such striking idea is directly inspired by the scalloped leading edges of whales’ flippers. WhalePower have applied similar design to plane wings, wind turbine blades, fans and rotors, with the so-called ‘tubercle effect’ translating to a massive 40% performance boost.

Microscopically, the leaves of a lotus plant are sharply pimpled – they have inspired Lotusan self-cleaning paint that causes rain to ball up and roll off, collecting dirt along the way.

Butterfly wings are wonderfully bright in sunlight yet contain no pigment. They refract light – and have inspired low-energy LEDs and pollutant-free coloured materials.

Refreshingly, the lexicon of biomimetics is very positive – it’s not all about reduction, minimising, emissions, waste – it’s about opportunity, ingenuity, creation, inspiration: CO2 is nature’s building block, it is not the devil in gaseous form. Waste is potential profit, it is not a lost cause. Viruses can help good things grow.

Indeed, Pawlyn, whose work includes the Sahara Forest Project and the Plastiki exhibition, told me that biomimicry “offers so many new and transformative alternatives…solutions and possibilities.”

Sam Stier, who works alongside Benyus at the Biomimicry Institute, told me “It’s not just about reducing the negative impact [eg. of a building], but can we produce more energy than it uses, create more water than it needs?”

Turning worn images of sustainability on their head, biomimicry champions manufacturing, industry, building – all those things that are so usually vilified in green circles.

The crux of true sustainable design (and beyond) must lie in finding a way to help businesses operate in a closed loop way. Companies are quickly learning that where ingenuity treads, profits are quick to follow. Cutting back on waste and boosting efficiency makes naturally good business sense.

“It can lead to solutions that are much cheaper” said Pawlyn “the Eden Project was about a third of the cost of traditional techniques.”

Why spend millions on fertilizer and pesticides when cherry-picking the most workable characteristics of a prairie ecosystem means that plants can look after themselves?

One such success story is that of carpet manufacturer Interface, who, taking inspiration from a forest floor, has created an almost zero-waste (and inversely proportionally profiting) business model.

One of the most exciting aspects of biomimicry lies in its adaptability of scale. A component of a cell, for example, may inspire a small but essential part of a machine. A whole ecosystem may inspire the planning and infrastructure of a whole town or city. Integrating architects, engineers and local government departments along biomimetic lines transforms towns into symbiotic, living systems – as in the German town of Lunen and in the Vancouver Winter 2010 Olympic Village which are both heated by waste energy from the cities’ sewers.

Indeed, Benyus has been working alongside architecture colossus HOK in planning new sustainable cities in India, China, Brunei and Brazil.

It’s trickling down to less nerdy circles, too. Fashion designer Donna Sgro’s stunning dress of Morphotex shimmers iridescently and relies on a reflective trick of nature found in an Amazonian butterfly wing rather than any toxic dyes.

Where there’s money to be made there are sure to be lawyers. Can nature be patented? The Biomimicry Institute is busy preparing its rebuttal by compiling the asknature.org site, giving non-scientists access to a vast database of potential biomimetic solutions. As Stier told me “There’s always going to be a legal conversation around patent law. But we’re hopeful that if the information is in the public domain, there will be less chance that a principal found in nature can be owned by someone.”

As to the future of biomimetics, Vincent is sanguine. “Reality is messy – breakthroughs are identified only in hindsight.” Still, it’s undeniably a hopeful branch of science and he predicts the emergence of reactive engineering informed by bone structures, living bridges and self-regulating buildings. With innovation driven by Peak oil, Pawlyn – who told me he is “not a dreamer” – sees the uptake of natural polymers like cellulose and chitin in building within five to ten years.

Biomimicry, like the very ecological systems it admires, operates in a clean, positive loop: the more we learn from ecology to address sustainable design, the more we nurture and preserve ecology’s capacity for teaching. More than an opportunity, it’s about relinquishing a certain amount of control back to mother nature. As Benyus asked in a recent lecture: “Do we believe we’re above nature? Do we have the humbleness to let the forest be the faculty?”

Examples of biomimicry in action

Namibian sand beetle that harvests water from the air – has inspired the Sahara Forest Project which aims to turn swathes of desert in Jordan and Tunisia into farms.

The bullet train in Japan is pointed like a Kingfisher’s beak, reducing energy use by 15%.

Complex 3D computer models that allow natural, non-linear logarithms to be applied to systems, increasing their efficiency.

Lotusan self-cleaning paint, bumped like a lotus-leaf so that water balls up and collects dirt.

The Eastgate Centre, Harare, ventilated by termite-mound inspired flues.

WhalePower, scalloped-edged wind turbine blades that reduce drag by 32%. Same principles also used on plane wings.

Calera sequesters CO2 from the environment by mimicking coral reefs to make cement.

Waste water treatments inspired by mangroves and marshes to filter water naturally.

Sharklet Technologies’ antibacterial surfaces, miniature scales prevent bacteria and dirt from settling – huge potential in hospitals.

OneSun self assembling solar cells, based on how a leaf works.

GMOpal have used algorithms inspired by trees and bones to develop light, strong frames for ‘bionic’ cars.

Inhabitat’s proposed floating ‘solar lily pads’ on Glasgow’s Clyde river.

PAX Scientific’s development of air and fluid movement technologies employ the Fibonacci sequence and reduce energy use.

Morphotex, dye-free butterfly-wing inspired coloured material.

Mirasol power-saving LED displays, again inspired by butterfly wings

Portfolio

APRIL 2013

You beauty! My feature on the challenges, history and ultimately game-changing rise of multicultural models in Australia is out in the April issue of The (Sydney) Magazine. The brilliantly enigmatic Jessica Gomes, Samantha Harris and Shanina Shaik talk catwalks, stereotyping and bullying…

WHEN they were at school, Jessica Gomes and Shanina Shaik were bullied. They stood out – their hair was dark, their skin was olive and their cheekbones weren’t like other girls’. “When I was younger, I wished I had blonde hair and blue eyes, just to fit in,” remembers Gomes, her poise at odds with the memory of her school days. “It was emotional,” adds Shaik, “to be growing up and trying to understand yourself and being picked on.”

A love letter to the old Syria, Sydney Morning Herald // 2 August 2012

My piece from the Sydney Morning Herald, today.

Another time … memories of Syria and Damascus. Photo: from the Dumas archives.

Many faces of a troubled land

In a corner of the old city of Damascus, along the Street Called Straight and beyond Bab Sharki’s backgammon set

hawkers, lies a convent.

There’s no diplomatic immunity, emergency plan or security company executing an abort strategy for its nuns.

Instead, they pray, talk quietly and make fresh apricot jam, alive with the Mediterranean heat from the trees that

droop, heavy with fruit, in the fields around the city each summer.

Their country has become part of the lexicon of global disaster – a repeated newsline that gathers pace, bodycount

and bloodshed with each passing day.

Syria has escalated into a full-blown civil war, pitting Baathists against the rebellious: those who have, for too long,

been silenced.

It’s a newsreel I – we – understand well, given the region, but it’s a Syria I don’t recognise.

Eighteen years ago, I moved with my family to Jordan, neighbouring Syria’s southern border. My aunt and uncle

had lived in Damascus for years, having been forced from the mortared, shrapnel-littered streets of Beirut in the

1980s and, like him, my father was sent to work in the region as a British diplomat.

We landed in Amman on a heady, jasmine-scented summer’s evening and plunged, headlong and en masse, into

a love affair with the Middle East that refuses to dissolve.

It’s a region of olive trees, musky incense and rambling, dark souks. Embarrassingly generous people, social

awkwardness and intense, unspoken and oft-misunderstood inequality.

Shrill muezzins on crackling speakers pierce the frenetic din of car horns and local, warbling pop; camels share

roads with battered taxis, dusty sheep and Toyota pick-up trucks. Censored Hollywood films play in city centres – and uncensored films play in gated, guarded mansions’ media rooms.

Before I started my first day of school in Amman, clad in long, scratchy trousers and an oversized collared shirt in the

stifling late summer heat, I imagined classes of teenagers with sandals, sheltered from fashion and Nikes. How wrong I

was – that eye-opening day, aged 14, was the first time that I understood how the Third World was no different, in

many ways, to the first. Vanity, like fear, has no borders.

We visited Syria and Israel often, switching cars and removable pages of passports to circumvent the diplomatic

faux pas of entering occupied Palestine with Syrian visas.

To us, Damascus was an old friend – but it had an intense religiosity too. We always stayed at that ramshackle

convent with its high ceilings and echoey, tiled, dark corridors. Pious, hunched nuns hovered down the long,

polished passages, eyes-down, and breakfasts were plates of sparklingly fresh, salty white cheese paired with

their apricot jam and steaming, pillowy hobbes bread. Sweet mint tea and bowls of oranges made up for non-existent

plumbing and the clunky, never-ending whirr of ancient ceiling fans.

Hama was a quiet place, carrying the weight of painful memories and not ready, in the mid-nineties, to remove the

splints from its shattered past and the 1982 massacre. Its empty play parks, nappy-filled riverbeds and concrete

“trees” – a peculiarity of the Middle East – eerily closed for business.

Aleppo, the great, great, grandfather of cities, beguiled me as it has beguiled for ten thousand years. It is the only

place I have ever felt truly, deeply violated and belittled for being female – but it is also the only place I have ever felt

so swallowed, so sublimely humbled by history – two of life’s more perspective-heavy lessons in solipsism. As

government troops meet the Free Syrian Army in streets that have seen more than their fair share of mens’ tears,

the gloomy, garrulous desert grotto that is the souk lies quiet, its clamour and jarring, almost bestial lifeblood

temporarily on pause.

We heard stories of the Big Brother ubiquity of the mukhabarat, the secret police, and we learnt – as we had been

taught before arriving in Amman – to go delicately, be diplomatic, stay quiet. The Assads were never going to last.

It’s a wonder life has limped on for this long under the family.

“Chai, Sir. Play backgammon, Sir”: Carpets, frankincense, battered taxis, poorly painted effigies of Assad on street

corners, at the entrance to souks and carpet shops. As those pictures are fought over and torn down, so must the

stranglehold of 41 years.

I wonder now what those salesmen are doing, whether they have underground bunkers with creeping wires looped

towards the open air and TV reception.

I think I know, as I remember those nuns, quieter than church mice as they shuffle along the convent’s stone floors,

what their prayers must be.