About Introduction Principles of a Circular Economy Building and Construction Materials Design and Retrofit Regenerate Nature Biomimicry - Bringing Nature’s Best Practices to the Built Environment Five centuries ago, Leonardo da Vinci and abundant resources; as bones are difficult to reuse and recycle. urged his students to “seek their lessons are renewed from the remnants of Imagine that the fibres and the in nature”. Today, this approach is a their old structure. Buildings can matrix of our composites were structured methodology: biomimicry. mimic these features and instead made of one and the same material, It is both a school of thought and a of extracting huge amounts of rare but organised in different ways, so scientific and technological discipline: and/or non renewable materials at that at the end of their life, products it is based on the principle of using great distances from where they are would once again become raw nature as a model to meet sustainable required, analysing which structures material and reusable. development challenges, and a are more efficient requires fewer combination of biology and technology materials that can be locally • In nature, resources are used and to solve human problems by transferring sourced. reused over and over. models from living organisms. Indeed, When winter comes, tree leaves these models have been tested and • Prioritising resilience rather - having fulfilled their multiple validated by 3.8 billion years of evolution than maximising performance. functions - do not just become and selection. Living things use multifunctional waste but, on the contrary, a stock < Biomimicry is not only about learning solutions (the leaf of the tree is both a solar panel, an evaporator, food for local animals whose excrement will feed the symbiont from the results of evolution (such and an insulating parasol), that micro-organisms of the tree, while, as form, function, or relationship), but are redundant (trees do not have after several lives, the constituents also about learning from the process a single, super-efficient leaf), and of the leaf will return to the tree, of evolution (such as collective decentralised (a leaf does not need following complete cycles. We intelligence), and the evolution success the tree to sign an order form for it to dream of a human production parameters (such as permanent reuse). capture solar energy). If we design systems which is capable of doing It is a systemic approach that places us according to these principles, our the same: making things that can within our ecosystem. buildings will have a longer lifespan be disassembled, reused separately and will even be able to have several for new uses, and then recycled to The biomimetic approach applies the successive lives (offices today, provide a stock of raw materials. principles of living things’ effectiveness homes tomorrow, shops the day to the design of products, buildings, after tomorrow) because they will be Examples of biomimicry innovations are services, or even organisations. For multi-purpose. already numerous, from velcro to aircraft example: winglets and glue for surgical use. The • Nature tends to use simple construction sector could well be where • Nature uses only the quantity of materials to promote biomimicry will have the most impact matter necessary. For instance, the decomposition at the end of life. tomorrow. alveolar structures of bones allow Conversely, human kind produces them to be both solid and light, while objects composed of sophisticated drawing locally from renewable and heterogeneous mixtures that 60 The Circular Built Environment Playbook
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