Last month the
Bay Area Biomimicry Swarm met at the San Francisco headquarters of
frog to explore ways biomimicry can inform the urban
ecosystem by surfacing solutions for repurposing and rebuilding to address
current and future scenarios. In addition to members from the local
community, participants included professionals attending one of two
conferences also taking place in the area:
Greenbuild, the world’s largest conference dedicated to green building, and the
VERGE San Francisco innovation conference.
To spark the conversation, three members of other biomimicry
networks shared how biomimicry was influencing and informing their urban
areas.
- Kathy Zarsky, founder ofBiomimicryTX
network, gave examples of how looking at Austin a system was surfacing
unexpected organic systems that could be leveraged and strengthened with
thought and intention. Rather than focusing on building new
infrastructure, they are focusing on how to repurpose existing
structures to address regional issues such as water management (water
use, water harvesting, and water conservation). They are also looking at
local species to gain insights into how they handle the challenges of
drought.
- Chris Garvin an architect from the BiomimicryNYC network talked about using nature
as the source of identifying the building codes for creating a built
ecosystem. The goals being to reconnect people back to nature, replicate
natural systems onsite, and bring outsourced systems back to the local
ecosystem. The defining issues facing New York City include enhancing
resiliency in face of major storms such as Sandy, restoring wetlands,
and preparing for sea level rise.
- Alexandra Ramsden,
a sustainability design consultant from the Biomimicry Puget Sound
network, talked about Seattle's Urban Green Print project. Within the
project the group identified storm water runoff and CO2 sequestration
(with the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050) as the two main issues to
address using the biomimicry lens. To begin their research they looked
at how nature handled these two variables prior to the land being
developed. It was fascinating to see how the natural wetlands of
Puget Sound handled the runoff and carbon sequestration quite
effectively prior to development. Now the question is how to bring some of those natural
features back into the built environment to minimize these effects in
the current day.
After these short presentations we self-organized into
groups to explore seven specific ways biomimicry could inspire new
thinking about ways to design cities to address issues we face in the
future. The seven topics we explored were surfaced from a survey members
completed in the weeks before the meeting. The final topics included:
- Aesthetics and quality of life in urban settings
- Climate adaptation in cities
- City services
- Urban food systems
- Building environment, energy efficiency
- Homelessness
- Farming as a living organism
Listening to each group report
on their discoveries and ideas highlighted how powerful it is to pull
together professionals from a variety of backgrounds to talk about knotty
issues that are both multi-faceted and difficult to resolve.
If you'd like to read the insights I gleaned about green/sustainable careers, check out my latest
Green Career Tip of the Week
If you'd like to read more about the topic of urban design, read frog’s series of articles on “
The Future of Cities.”
