Biblio

Benyus, M. Janine. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York:
William Morrow, 1997.

Pinto, Mark. Biomimicry at E4S. 17 Oct. 2007.

Nature's 100 Best: Top Biomimicry Solutions to Environmental Crises—A compilation of the top hundred different innovations of animals, plants, and other organisms that have been researched and studied by the Biomimicry Institute.

Products and Systems

Organizations

• Biomimetic-Architecture
• The Biomimicry Guild
• Biomimicry Institute
• Center for Biometrics
• Rocky M ountain Institute

Publications

• Nature's 100 Best: Top Biomimicry Solutions to Environmental Crises—A compilation of the top hundred different innovations of animals, plants, and other organisms that have been researched and studied by the Biomimicry Institute.

Architecture

• Animal Architecture by Jennifer Owings Dewey. 1991. Examines how creatures like arthropods, vertebrates, birds, and rodents build their homes.
• Design and Nature II by Ed M. W. Collins et. Al. 2004. Contains proceedings of 2nd international conference on design and nature. Brings together researchers around the world on a variety of studies involving nature's significance for modern scientific thought and design.
• Wonders of Animal Architecture by Sigmund A. Lavine. 1964. Examines how creatures like arthropods, vertebrates, birds, and rodents build their homes.

Biography

• Buckminster Fuller's Universe by Lloyd Sieden. 1989. Explores Fuller's examination of significant underlying principles in nature.

Biology

• Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus. 1997. Demonstrates how nature's solutions to survival needs have been the creative jumping-off points for individuals seeking solutions to human challenges, developing, or simply revitalizing processes or products.
• Exploring the Way Life Works: The Science of Biology by Mahlon B. Hoagland., et. Al. 2001. Comprehensive overview of the natural world from patterns in life to energy and evolution. Devoted to the wonder and unity of the natural world.
• Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell by Boyce Rensberger. 1998. A digest of everything currently known about the mechanisms by which living cells perform their myriad of tasks.
• Natural Earth, Living Earth by Miranda Smith and Steve Parker. 1996. Full-color photography shows how living things interact with the functions and conditions of the earth.
• The Way Nature Works by Editor Jill Bailey. 1992. Drawing on a series of questions that children might ask, a team of scientists proposes answers in this manual for adult readers. They address large issues such as atmospheric phenomena, ecosystem relationships, and animal communication with brief essays, each well illustrated with charts, diagrams, and photographs.
• The Work of Nature: How the Diversity of Life Sustains Us by Yvonne Baskin, et al. 1997. Baskin examines the threats posed to humans by the loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity is much more than number of species—it includes the complexity, richness, and abundance of nature at all levels.

Chemistry

• Biomineralization by Stephen Mann. 2002. Describes a new type of chemistry that brings together soft and hard material for the design of functionalized inorganic-organic materials.
• Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice by Paul T. Anastas, John Charles Warner. 2000. Overview of the design, development, and evaluation process central to green chemistry. Explores alternative solvents and catalysts, benign syntheses and biomimetic principles, among many other topics.

Design

• Biologic: Environmental Protection by Design by David Wann. 1990. Guide to designing our way out of the environmental conundrum we are in by taking a system's view of technology—asking, "how does it fit in?"
• Deep Design: Pathways to a Livable Future by David Wann. 1996. A new way of thinking about design by asking: "What is our ultimate goal?" The idea is to produce designs that are sensitive to living systems.
• Design for the Real World, Human Ecology and Social Change by Victor Papanek. 1984. One of the world's most widely read books on design. Author provides a blueprint for sensible, responsible design.
• Design in Nature: Learning from Trees by Claus Mattheck. 2004. Describes and verifies external shape laws in nature. Also explores self healing. Many optimization examples.
• Design Lessons from Nature by Benjamin De Brie Taylor. 1974. Describes strategies in the plant kingdom with some suggestions on their relationship to human designs.
• Design with Nature by Ian L. McHarg. 1969. A blend of philosophy and science, author shows how humans can copy nature's examples to design and build better structures.

Economics/Business

• Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins. 2000. Three top strategists show how leading-edge companies are practicing "a new type of industrialism" that is more efficient and profitable while saving the environment and creating jobs.
• Nature of Economies by Jane Jacobs. 2000. Dissects relationships between economics and ecology through a multilayered discourse around the fundamental premise that "human beings exist wholly within nature as part of a natural order."

Engineering

• Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies by Editor Yoseph Bar-Cohen. 2005. Explores biological models useful to engineering and the challenges awaiting future research.
• Design Homology by David Offner. 1995. A mechanical engineering textbook that contrasts human designs with nature's designs.
• Mechanical Design in Organisms by Stephen A. Wainwright. 1982. Surveys the mechanics of living systems and components of living systems. Interface between mechanical engineering and biology.
• Nature and Design by Ed M. W. Collins, et. Al. 2004. Comprehensive introduction to common scientific laws of both the natural world and engineered worlds. Features mathematics, physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, biomimicry, mechanical engineering and history of science.

Evolution

• On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. 1992. Classic work of biology and modern science sets forth seminal "theory of transformation"—that one species evolves into another not by successive minor changes in individual body parts but by large-scale transformations involving the body as a whole.

General Science

• Basic Nature by Andrew Scott. 2002. Fundamental concepts of modern science.
• Nature and Design by Editor M. W. Collins, et. Al. 2004. Comprehensive introduction to common scientific laws of both the natural world and engineered worlds. Features mathematics, physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, biomimicry, mechanical engineering and history of science.

Innovation

• Invention by Design by Henry Petroski. 1996. Philosophical and cultural study of the process of invention including case studies.
• Nature: Mother of Invention by Felix Paturi. 1976. The book provides an overview of bioinspiration, noting that scientists can learn from natural structures of all sizes and put their knowledge to use in a number of ways, often by studying nature at the nanolevel, where the distinction between nature and human technology is often blurred.
• The Gecko's Foot: Bio-Inspiration, Engineering New Materials and Devices from Nature by Peter Forbes. 2005. Presents technologists' pure research into nano-anatomy, followed by their applied and, as many entrepreneurs hope, commercial mimicry of nature's ingenuity.

Material Science

• Biomimetic Materials Chemistry by Stephen Mann (Editor). 1995. Provides a unified, up-to date approach to the applications of biological concepts, products and processes in material research.
• Biomineralization by Stephen Mann. 2002. Describes a new type of chemistry that brings together soft and hard material for the design of functionalized inorganic-organic materials.
• Biomolecular Materials by Editor Christopher Viney et al. Materials Research Society. Volume 292. 1992. Design of material synthesis, assembly, processing and physical optimization strategies based on examples from nature
• Structural Biomaterials: (Revised Edition) by Julian F.V. Vincent. 1990. The book presents a biologist's analysis of the structural materials of organisms, using molecular biology as a starting point. It is an excellent introduction to the field which attempts to stimulate interest in biomaterials.

Mechanics

• Life's Devices: The Physical World of Animals and Plants by Steven Vogel, Rosemary Calvert. 1988. This is an entertaining and informative book that describes how living things bump up against non-biological reality.
• Life in Moving Fluids by Steven Vogel. 1996. This book is for biologists who want to come to the beginning of a quantitative understanding of a wide variety of adaptations, and for general readers who want to see how fluid mechanics work in a varied and often surprising context.
• Structure, Form, Movement by Heinrich Hertel. 1963. Explores various means in which nature manifests structure, form, and movement.
• The Biomechanics of Insect Flight by Robert Dudley. 2002. Explores insect physiology, functional morphology, paleontology, aerodynamics, behavior, and ecology. The book excels as a synthesis of all these fields, and as a unique source of information on the subject of insect flight as a whole.

Patterns

• The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture by Gyorgy Doczi. 1981. The Power of Limits was inspired by the continuity of natural patterns. The book explores how certain proportions occur over and over and are also repeated in how things grow and are made.
• The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature by Philip Ball. 2001. This deep, beautiful exploration of the recurring patterns that we find both in the living and inanimate worlds will change how one thinks about everything from evolution to earthquakes.
• The Shape of Life by Nancy Burnett. 2002. Based on the National Geographic -Sea Studios Foundation series seen on PBS. Every animal that ever lived fits into one of only eight basic body plans. Those basic forms have given rise billions of species of animals and continue to define the shape of life on Earth.

General

• The sustainability revolution: portrait of a paradigm shift by Andres Edwards. 2005.
• Resilience thinking: sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world by Brian Walker. 2006.