Table of Contents
What You Will Do
- Deepen your understanding of patterns and biomimicry in order to provide useful tools for ecological design.
- Learn to recognize patterns in nature, and to look for opportunities to mimic them in your designs.
Patterns in Nature
This section by Looby Macnamara
What follows is an excerpt from Looby’s book, People and Permaculture.
(download this PDF if you’d like to print out the charts.)
All of nature is composed of interlocking patterns. Astonishingly the vast complexity of life is composed of only a small number of different patterns manifesting in an infinite variety of forms. These patterns are repeated at different levels all the way from atoms and cells to river beds and galaxies.
Structural Patterns
Humans have long since used these patterns in their buildings, crafts, arts and technologies. Each pattern has characteristics that serve a variety of functions. Copying nature’s patterns in technology is known as biomimicry. Before inventing or creating anything we can ask ourselves how would nature do this?
For example, how would nature provide strength or be waterproof?
Everything we understand about the principles of ecological design comes from the observation and understanding of the patterns underlying the functioning of natural systems. Nature is composed of structural patterns as well as patterns governing behaviour on an individual and collective level.
A lot of the structural patterns combine strength and beauty with efficiency of space through large surface area or extensive edges. Looking at the benefits of these characteristics provides us with attitudes that we can emulate in our design work towards a life-sustaining Earth culture.
Behavioural Patterns
Like structural patterns, behavioural patterns are found repeated in nature, and each has characteristics and benefits that we can use in our design work. For example animals live in groups, families, pairs or predominantly alone. They exhibit different waking and sleeping patterns; diurnal, nocturnal or taking frequent naps.
Each behaviour has evolved in relation to the whole environment including other animals. Structural patterns inform behavioural patterns, for example flocking is a manifestation of the lobe pattern; there is no leader, just many individuals responding to the same conditions. Where there is a ‘pack leader’ the branching pattern is more evident.
We see that interdependency is the common pattern in nature. Many animals have evolved to be dependent on others. Interdependency needs to be revalued in our societies. Many of the structural patterns, such as branching and net have large edges or surface area. With flocking we see that it is beneficial to minimise external edge so that there is less vulnerability to predators, and in the case of penguins heat is conserved by less exchange to the outside while increasing the edge for exchange of body heat inside the mob.
This illustrates that there are both advantages and disadvantages of increasing edge, and nature uses different strategies depending on the circumstances.
Likewise in our designs we can be strategic about the amount of edge we create. For example, vegetable bed shapes can depend on our watering and accessibility needs. Thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of creating edges in our working days, we can choose to insulate our activities or open up to new connections: there are some jobs that benefit from lots of edge to stop the boredom and others where minimum edge is important to maintain focus.
Patterns in people
Humans can be seen as complex sets of patterns overlaying and interacting with each other. We have patterns from a cellular level to organism to interpersonal to collective. Patterns of thinking and behaviour shape our lives. We learn through following patterns as children. As soon as we are born we recognise the pattern of a human face. Walking comes from observing and mimicking our parents, learning languages through following patterns of speech. From the early stages our daily routines consist of cyclical patterns: when we eat and play; active and restive periods. As adults our relationships and work lives exhibit more complex and flexible patterns. Patterns guide our lives enabling us to repeat actions quickly and easily; for example many people have a morning routine that gets them out of the house on time.
However, patterns can outlive their usefulness and we may become stuck in routines without questioning and improving them. The reason for the pattern in the first place may have changed but we still maintain it. An example of this is the ‘QWERTY’ layout of letters on keyboards. It was originally invented for the typewriter that was not able to cope with very quick typing (according to folklore, although people have different interpretations). We have since moved to computers and quick typing is no problem for electronic keyboards. We keep the QWERTY pattern because the time cost of relearning is deemed too high, even though in the long run it may save us time and energy.
Perhaps we have the pattern of a mid-morning snack in our daily routine that became a habit years ago when we had a light breakfast very early in the morning and had low blood sugar levels later on. Now, possibly decades later we may still be maintaining this pattern even though circumstances have changed and the original need is no longer present.
Many patterns are learnt from our parents, friends, society, books and television. Each culture has its own patterns. All of these have influence over our thinking and behaviour. Examining our patterns and where they have come from is the first step to creating new ones in our lives.
Pattern recognition.
Patterns are all around us, although mostly taken for granted. Metaphors, songs, stories and proverbs traditionally help us access our understanding of underlying patterns. The use of archetypal behaviour in stories is commonplace. A familiar pattern when trying something new is for it to work on the third time – ‘third time lucky’. The story of Goldilocks, amongst others, works on this pattern; the first chair was too hard, the second too soft and the third just right.
Using metaphors from the natural world helps us to see ourselves as part of nature. Our understanding of patterns such as spirals and waves is deeply intuitive because they are present within our bodies. When we connect with our own patterns and those around us we have a sense of belonging to something immensely ordered, vast and amazing. When we create using these patterns our creations are beautiful.
We can look at natural processes, cycles and rhythms to find functional patterns for our designs. Processes could include leaf drop in the autumn, seedling growth, hibernation, how bees collect nectar, or hunters bring down prey; any of these could provide metaphors that we can find useful in our design work.
We can also look to our own lives for patterns that we can use in our design. If we are embarking on a big project like building our home, we could think of how we have made a patchwork blanket, do jigsaw puzzles or cook meals to find attitudes and benefits that we can translate.
Biomimicry
This section by Maddy Harland
As children, we were taught to see patterns and rhythms in the natural world in two or perhaps three dimensions. Our solar system is still often described as a collection of planets circling around a central sun within a galaxy. If we were lucky, we might have been taken to a planetarium to see a 3D version, but I would still say that this old-style harmony of the spheres is still so far from the truth.
We live in an astonishing, dynamically evolving world that is infused with patterns from the macrocosmic level to the microcosm that have developed through interrelations of time, gravity, orbits and forms that have evolved through function. What is more, we can study and appreciate them in our daily lives, enhancing our understanding of how animals and plants interact.
We now know that the Sun itself orbits around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy pulling along the planets in its gravity. The gravitational movement within the comet-like trajectory of the Sun creates a fabulous helix.
A helix is made by a circle moving through space, whilst a vortex is a moving spiral. What will immediately dawn on you is that spiral and vortex patterns appear in so many forms in our universe and on our planet. We have helical galaxies, the DNA double helix, spiraling fern fronds and phyllotaxis (the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem), and vortexes in terrestrial weather patterns (including hurricanes), whirlpools, antelope horns, sunflowers, the nautilus shell, snail and mollusc shells, vine tendrils, and algae.
Look at the application of the helical pattern for life on Earth.
The nautilus shell, a living fossil that has survived in Earth’s oceans for the last 500 million years, is a logarithmic spiral. Its main feature is the large snail-like shell that is coiled upwards and lined with mother-of-pearl. The shell is subdivided into as many as 30 chambers. As the shell grows, the creature’s body moves forward into the new larger chamber and produces a wall to seal off the old chamber. This is the kind of spiral most commonly found in nature because it is the most efficient way for a biological organism to grow. By maintaining its shape through successive growth cycles as the spiral turns, it uses the least energy for the most gain.
There are other interesting natural phenomena that are similar to logarithmic spirals. Insects seek sources of light in spiraling flights. Falcons, hawks and eagles attack distant prey from high-speed dives by flying along curved paths that resemble spirals. W.B. Yeats wrote about this in his 1919 poem, ‘The Second Coming’: Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer…
Our ancestors across the Earth regarded the spiral as the shape of deity. A cross-section of the nautilus shell provides us with a clue. It shows the cycles of its growth as a series of chambers, arranged in a precise Golden Mean spiral. The Golden Mean, represented by the Greek letter phi (with the decimal representation of 1.618…), is one of those mysterious natural numbers that arises out of the basic structure of our cosmos. Phi appears regularly in the realm of things that grow and unfold in steps, just as the nautilus shell grows larger in each spiral by phi. From the molecules of our DNA to the galaxy we spiral within, life and its forms emerge out of geometrical codes.
There are basic patterns found in nature. Patterns are created by pressure between two media (wind and water = waves), growth and flow. Patterns trap energy in form. They are a way of transferring energy (spirals of growth), harvesting nutrients and energy (roots and branches – streams, rivers, veins on leaves, lungs, vascular systems), tessellations (wax cells in honeycomb, fruits, flowers like Snakes Head Fritillary), cracks (relief of stress), waves (allows movement, circulation and transfers of energy formed by currents and wind), scattering patterns (seeds and materials), lobes (best for optimising growth), circles, spheres, toroid or core shape, etc.
Biomimicry and ecological design
Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimicry Institute, explains how life on Earth is 3.8 million years of research and development (R&D). There are 10-30 million species that have well adapted solutions to environmental challenges and these solutions have been worked out in situ. If all the species on Earth were a biological clock, we humans would have entered the time zone a few minutes before midnight. Other species are therefore our biological elders, our ancestors, and we need to take our cues from them. These species have spent millions of years evolving. They have worked out how to leave their environment in good heart for their future offspring. Life has worked out how to create a sustainable world! Imagine what we humans can learn from them.
Manufacturers have learnt to mimic the biology of many natural materials or creatures to produce more efficient designs. For instance, glass manufacturers have mimicked the way a leaf sheds water to enable them to design self-cleaning window panes. Ecological designers also want to mimic natural patterns to design more productive, resilient systems. The forest garden or food forest is a prime example. Rather than planting a single level monoculture we want to mimic the stacked pattern of a forest or woodland, with its many layers from the rhizosphere, ground cover, herbaceous, shrubs, small trees, larger trees (top canopy) and the vertical. The designer is looking to fill every niche to produce food, medicines, biomass for heating, mulch and timber, wildlife habitat, microclimate, a calm human sanctuary or play area, and so on.
By exploring and understanding patterns in nature, we can develop our designs so that they are more productive, biodiverse and resilient. We are actively trying to mimic nature as closely as possible. Patterns enable us to read the landscape at a meta level and understand how all the elements affect each other and are interrelated. They are keys to understanding the intricacies of nature.
Here’s a lovely discussion of Biomimicry with Maddy and Nicola Peel
Homework
Questions for Review
- What physical patterns can you identify in nature? Do you see them in your garden, in your neighborhood?
- What cultural patterns are prevalent in your life?
- Can you see how disrupting them could provoke positive change? How?
- How might you apply this pattern language and biomimicry to your design project for this course?
Recommended Hands-On
Observe and capture patterns in nature.
Go outside into nature. Quietly observe the world around you. Look for the patterns around you. Record them with a camera or a sketch pad and pen or pencil. Examine the plants, trees, birds, animals, sky, and the ground beneath you.
Look from the macrocosm (like the clouds in the sky) to the microcosm (how seeds have been scattered or the veins on a leaf). Draw or photograph what you see. Label each images according to which pattern(s) you found there.
Continue this “treasure hunt” to see how many examples of biomimicry you can find. Where have humans mimicked patterns in nature to solve design problems?
