Nature is the largest R&D lab for Design. Whatever problem you want to solve, probably the answer is to be found in the natural world. Both Bioneering and Biomimicry see the natural world as the ultimate operating system. It is a design challenge to be in perfect symbiosis with natural world, and do no harm.

1. Nature’s Opera,ng Systems
The Biosphere is a database full of strategies, processes and
pa=erns that show us how we can organize
the people world in a be=er way
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2. #wmyh
This presenta,on is wri=en and arranged by Stefaan Vandist, www.trinity‐planning.be.
It is part of the 10 Adver,sing Harvest collec,on, and first shown at the “what makes
you horny” seminar of Boondoggle Amsterdam. (#wmyh at twi=er)
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3. I am an amateur photographer of the natural world, its pa=erns, processes and
strategies in which organisms are successful. What we see here are termites using a
pipe as a highway. Although termites are always on the move, they never crash, never
have traffic jams, never are trapped by obstacles…
On top of that, they reach out humans by far when it comes to biomass. But no‐one
says there are to many ants in the world. They fer,lize and drain the soil. They are
extremely well interconnected with the natural world
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4. BRUTAL FORCE
However some species might be rude some,mes, nature’s opera,ng systems are very
gentle to their environment. In the people‐world however, we take‐make‐waste things,
o^en in a brutal way!
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5. BRUTAL FORCE
The way we take minerals from the soil is o^en in ‘cubng away a mountaintop‐style’,
which is not as gentle as the way minerals are distracted from the soil in the natural
world. By trees for example.
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6. BRUTAL FORCE
The way we make things is very energy consuming and has a heavy cost for our
environments. We heat‐beat‐and‐treat things. We manufacture with high
temperatures, high pressures and toxic treatments
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7. BRUTAL FORCE
Even the way we harvest food is brutal force.
We literally scrape all life of the ocean floor when fishing
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8. BRUTAL FORCE
The way we move our ass from one point to another is bad organized and largely
based on brutal force. Every year, humanity burns approximately
100.000 years of ancient plant growth.
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9. BRUTAL FORCE
The Jurassic Car on this billboard promises me that it is intelligent, but it is
definitely not even close to the intelligent design of… a hummingbird.
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10. LEARN
A hummingbird is not larger then a thumb, flies 30 miles an hour, and flies
2000 miles a year. It can operate 3 dimensional and hardly makes noise. It
can fly over open water for 600 miles without a stop, on just 2,1 grams of
fuel. It fuels with nectar, not gasoline, and the more it fuels, the more it
guarantees the survival of flowering plants, it selves, its offspring and other
species that depend on nectar.
Imagine the same principle would count in our way of mobility?
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11. LEARN
Today in Industrial agriculture, there goes a lot of money to pesticides and
fertilizers. On top of that, soil needs to be ploughed every year.
In high scale monocultures, we need an average of 10 kilocalories of oil to
produce 1 kilocalories of food.
The pre-Columbian prairie-type of growing our food is more economical and
ecological, consisting of different species in an order that co-exists with the
natural world. Wouldn’t it be a more healthy, more protective and more pleasant
to look at? 11

12. LEARN
To make complex materials we heat, beat and treat. We heat petroleum products
to high temperatures, subject them to high pressures and treat them in chemical
baths (that are very toxic, and very expensive)
Spiders make six kinds of silk, that are five times stronger – ounce by ounce -
than steal. Imagine we could emulate spiders and take carbon-based, abundant
and raw materials an allow them to self-assemble in silent processes, operating
in water at room temperature and produce biodegradable fiber. 12

13. LEARN
A leaf has tens of thousands of tiny photosynthetic reaction centres. In fact solar
panels are mimicking natural operating processes as well. Every leaf or grass
helm is currently producing energy in a more effective way than we do. Within
each leaf, sun’s energy is absorbed, sending a negative charge to one side of a
membrane and a positive charge to the other side. It is essentially a tin battery.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could mimic that molecular battery to split water and
make storable hydrogen?
Probably a next step in solar to think about.
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14. LEARN
Cell biologists now realize that every cell in our body is in a sense a
sophisticated computer, responding to signals and information from enzymes,
antibodies, antigens and so on that attract or repel one another. They scan,
each other, hook together, and self-assemble. It is a less 0 and 1-kind of
paradigm, it is more three dimensional, and computer scientists are noticing
much different possibilities if we would compute in the same way.
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15. LEARN
Ecosystems like coral reefs are densely interconnected. Every niche you can
possibly imagine is filled. Waste equals food in all the biosphere.
Industrial symbiosis is the idea of organizing our industry in the same way. Shift
our economy form the linear ‘take-make-waste’
into closed-loop systems.
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16. ROMANTIC DREAMING?
OR
MAGICAL REALISM
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17. REAL
The goal was to cut out the extremely loud claps that occurred when Japan's
bullet train emerged from tunnels.
Engineers looked toward the kingfisher, which dives seamlessly into water. A
nosecone designed after the bird's beak solved the issue.
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18. REAL
Mercedes-Benz looked towards the boxfish for their bionic car concept. Noting
the aerodynamics and efficiency of the boxfish's shape, the engineers decided
to apply the characteristics of the fish to a car. The result is a very streamlined
vehicle with a 65% lower drag coefficient than other compact cars out at the
time (2005).
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19. REAL
What better examples to use for underwater turbine design than the flora and
fauna of the oceans? BioPower Systems did just this. Looking at the way sea
plants move in currents and the efficient movements of fish like sharks and
tuna, BioPower used evolution as its role model for designing turbines for
effective tidal power generation.
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20. REAL
The best cleaner is no cleaner. Scientists today try to find out and hack how
Lotus leafs manage to stay clean thanks to the patterns in their surface.
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21. REAL
If you've ever tried to pick a mussel off a rock or pier piling, you've likely noticed
that they sure know how to stick to something. Columbia Forest Products
looked at the natural adhesive abilities of the blue mussel and came up with a
way to use soy-based formaldehyde-free technology in the construction of
hardwood plywood products.
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22. REAL
Biomimicry can be used at even the tiniest of scales. Biosignal wanted to create
a way to control bacteria without killing it, so that bacterial resistance can be
avoided while preventing infection. The company took inspiration from the
seaweed delisea pulchra, which has a way of stopping bacteria's ability to
communicate. Colonies of bacteria then cannot form and cause infection, yet
the bacteria isn't killed and doesn't form a resistant strain.
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23. READ
1. Biomimicry
Vision: Nature is an R&D lab with a billion + years of experience
Price: it is free
Ask: How would nature solve this?
Learn: from form, pa=erns and processes in nature
Do: Design inspired by nature 23

24. READ
2. Bioneering
Vision: The Biosphere is an opera,ng system
Ask: How do we use the power of nature to clean up our mess?
Do: make living machines, organize ourselves be=er with the natural
world
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25. REAL
Mangus Larsson wants to halt the marching sands of desertification, with a
6,000-kilometer-long sandstone wall that would bisect Africa east to west at the
southern edge of the Sahara.
A particular microorganism can turn loose media, such as sand or soils, into
rock-solid stone in about a day by creating calcium carbonate.
“The idea is to stop the desert using the desert itself,” 25

26. REAL
This is a living machine, the Restorers of John Todd are combinations
of swamps, ponds and greenhouses that treats our sewage and waste
water, purifies the rivers and provides ponds to breed fish for
consumption. You find prototypes in different areas and climates, in
Hawaii, Holland, Barcelona, Boston and Nigeria.
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27. REAL
Last but certainly not least, this is fomen fermentarus, it looks like an
ordinary mushroom, but Paul Stamets, an expert in Fungi discovered
six ways in which this sort of mushrooms can save the world. How
they can restore depleted soils, help clean up contaminated ground,
help us with reforestation, help us feed growing human populations,… 27

28. Hannover Principles REMEMBER
 Nature runs on sunlight
 Nature only uses the energy it needs
 Nature fits form to func,on
 Nature recycles everything
 Nature rewards coopera,on
 Nature banks on diversity
 Nature demands local exper,se
 Nature curbs excesses from within
 Nature taps the power of limits
William Mc Donough, author of Cradle‐to‐cradle
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29. Luc Schuiten – Vegetal City
The earth belongs to the living!
stefaan@trinity‐planning.be
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