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Course description

This course explores the principles of biomimicry and how they can be applied to sustainable design practices. Students will learn about the role of biomimicry in regenerative architecture, urbanism, and materials science. The course will examine case studies of biomimicry applications in various fields and explore the challenges and opportunities of applying these principles to design. The course will also introduce students to ecosystem service assessment tools and how they can be used to inform sustainable design decisions.

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will learn principles of biomimicry and how they can be applied to design solutions for environmental challenges.
2. Participants will learn the opportunities and challenges of implementing biomimicry.
3. Participants will synthesize knowledge from different disciplines, including biomimicry implementation in biology, architecture, and civil engineering, to develop innovative design solutions inspired by nature for landscape architecture.

General Course Information

Course Preview:
Abstract: Biomimicry is a growing field of developing environmental innovations for materials, façade systems, buildings, and urban planning. In France, we observe an extensive diversity of initiatives in biomimicry for the development of regenerative cities. These initiatives blossom in a large range of areas, from education to urban policies, to achieve a major environmental, social and economic paradigm shift. To provide a comprehensive understanding of this development at the national scale, this paper presents and discusses the diversity of the developed initiatives over the last 10 years in six main fields-education, urban policies, fundamental and applied research, design demonstrators, arts, and communication. This research is an opportunistic study based on the analysis of these initiatives enriched by the feedback of the stakeholders collected by the authors working in the field of biomimicry over the last seven years. We identify that biomimicry in France has mainly extended through individual initiatives of teachers, territorial authorities, architectural studios, or researchers rather than through the support of public policies. Putting into perspective developments in biomimicry by other countries, this cross-discipline analysis provides recommendations for the extensive development of regenerative architecture and urbanism at the national scale.