biomimicry

Despite a school year disrupted by the pandemic, teams of students from across the nation submitted a host of ideas in the latest Biomimicry Institute’s Youth Design Challenge (YDC). The YDC brings the process of nature-inspired design into the classroom of middle and high school students, who collaborate in teams to solve sustainability problems using nature as a guide.

For passive control of tidal electricity systems, permeable courtyard tiles, and fog water collection units, three winning teams of middle school and high school innovators looked to cucumber seeds, plants from the yam family and Namib beetles, respectively.  The three projects were among the six selected for recognition out of 78 participating in the 2019 Biomimicry Youth Design Challenge.  Biomimicry approaches sustainable innovation by looking first to nature to find proven competencies — patterns and strategies in the systems vernacular — for dealing with similar challenges.  The resulting innovations often draw models for adaptation or replication from unexpected aspects or elements of nature.