Jamie Miller, Director of Biomimicry, SJ Group, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Fortune
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00:00All right, so maybe let's start with, you know, obvious straightforward question
00:05What's the best way to understand what biomimicry is?
00:10Biomimicry is Velcro. In the 1940s a Swiss engineer got fed up with birds sticking to his pants and his dog's hair and
00:17Took his frustration into fascination to copy that hooking mechanism to make Velcro one of the most successful adhesives of our time
00:24it's a
00:26Wind turbine blade that copies a humpback whale fin and those bumps on the leading edge called tubercles and applying that wood
00:33Applying it to a wind turbine blade finding that that blades 20% more efficient runs at slower wind speeds and is quieter
00:39So biomimicry is recognizing that nature has been designing for 3.8 billion years and in that time has figured out some really brilliant
00:47Strategies to similar problems that we face and then how are you using that those 3.8 billion years of design?
00:54When it comes to architecture and buildings
00:58The process of doing biomimicry quote-unquote is is to always start with what do you want your design to do?
01:05Instead of jumping into what you want to design take a moment and think what is it that you're trying to achieve?
01:10And once you understand that function you ask the natural world. So practical examples. We designed a building in India
01:17We wanted it to be self-cooling. We wanted to capture the monsoons and hold them
01:22So our question was how does nature self-cool? We looked at termite mounds. We looked at elephant skin
01:29We looked at prairie dog holes and we learned from those metaphors those strategies to make really simple
01:35Design solutions to give you a practical example of how it applied the elephant skin has this beautiful cracking kind of
01:42Facade we'll call it. I'll preface this by saying to you. I dropped out of biology. I hated biology
01:47So I'm looking at it through an engineering lens
01:49And what we realized is that those cracks when an elephant blows water over its body
01:54Those cracks capture the moisture and so it allows it to evaporatively cool over a longer period of time
02:00It's like a little protective area
02:02So we designed this rock wall facade that's hooked up to the rain harvesting system
02:06Trickles water into the rocks and has that same kind of process it evaporatively cools
02:10It pulls the water off at a slower rate to passively cool the building
02:14I mean, it's funny you mentioned that you dropped out of biology because in that case like then
02:17How did you get started in this field in the first place?
02:19I mean you like how did you become an expert in this topic before then joining up with SJ group?
02:27It started 20 years ago. I was an engineering student
02:31In Canada learning learning engineering and and the whole time I had this feeling like there had to be a different way of doing things
02:38I was being trained in a certain paradigm
02:41So I took this elective called math and poetry was an hour and a half of math
02:44Theorems and an hour and a half of poetry. It wasn't this synergy of the two
02:48It was just we studied math and then we studied poems
02:50But in the math part our professor was brilliant and had at having us
02:55Almost imagine like we're coming up with the theorems ourselves and the one that stood out and kind of shifted my whole paradigm was the fibonacci
03:01sequence, so it's a sequence of numbers that
03:05When you play with them you get the golden ratio and then you get that spiral and that's where the professor got me
03:11Once once we saw this spiral. He says where have you seen this before and in that moment?
03:16I realized that spirals in the packaging of sunflower seeds. It's in the way in the pine cones curl
03:22It's in the way that you're when you pull the plug in your bathtub. You get that vortex
03:27That spiral was ubiquitous in nature and in that moment. I realized that nature could teach us about design
03:33So up until that time I had been learning to use math and science to engineer my environment
03:38When in that moment I learned that nature through math and science could teach us about how to design let's say one one more
03:45Definitions question. Yeah, you know another one of the topics we're working on is regenerative design
03:50It tells me more about kind of what what you mean by that term when it comes to the built environment
03:56I'll start by saying
03:58Nature is naturally regenerative. So what I love about biomimicry and why it's so powerful is that these terms like circularity
04:07Regenerative design passive design nature has already done it and
04:11Biomimicry can inspire us to look at what can nature teach us to do next and so regenerative design to me is is really about
04:18Recognizing that humans are natural. We're a natural species
04:23Our breath feeds trees our bodies feed the soil. Why can't our buildings feed their ecosystem?
04:29So at some point in our history in our evolution as a species
04:32We've diverted we've diverged and that was what I really got excited about my PhD was wondering what made us so different
04:38And so regenerative design is just coming back
04:41Adopting new paradigms new principles so that we create systems that go way beyond doing less harm and are truly regenerative
04:48So what does it actually mean when you're looking at a project whether you know, just a building or a larger area?
04:54What does it mean to you know to work with the natural world as opposed to against it or ignoring it?
05:00So this is a key part of our paradigms that we've we've adopted is that
05:05In when we build the first phase of any design process starts in our imagination
05:10It starts with our assumptions our biases how we think informs how we design
05:16Some of the assumptions that you can see in our build environment is that we're separate from nature. We've designed incredible concrete
05:22Systems that separate us from nature. We've also built on this paradigm that we can control or predict nature
05:30And these aren't necessarily wrong
05:32But what we've realized is that the more that we've grown the more difficult it is to predict nature
05:37The more expensive it is to fight nature nature wants to come in nature abhors gradients
05:43And if I mean the case study is if we all left the city today, what would naturally happen is nature would take over
05:50So the thing about stopping to fight nature is learning from her principles learning
05:56How to design in a way that allows nature to come in and allows us to kind of dance with nature, but let nature lead
06:04So part of the reason why I think this we're talking about this now is obviously there's climate change climate change is made
06:12Sustainability environmental protection a lot more present. I think in the minds of developers and designers
06:19Obviously, we're based here in Asia. A lot of our cities are threatened by climate change extreme weather
06:24I remember last year the really bad floods that happened in Hong Kong
06:28Like I've never seen floods that bad in Hong Kong ever in my in my 30 years of living there
06:33So, you know, what would be your your advice to?
06:37Developers and designers out here when it comes to buy mimicry and regenerative design, you know, what should they be looking for?
06:43How should they be thinking about this problem? How should they be thinking about design in an age of climate change and extreme weather?
06:49Yeah, great question
06:52We start all of our processes with something called the living story
06:56and what that means is we want to learn what the land wants to do what it will support us in doing and what it
07:02Will permit us to do and it gives us this unique lens to kind of like imagine
07:06What's the trajectory of that landscape if we were not to touch it if we weren't to do anything?
07:11What does nature want to do and then to start start to make design decisions based on that?
07:16So if nature wants to flood
07:18The old paradigm or the engineering based resilience is try to fight that flood
07:22But how big our berms going to be how much energy are we going to put into fighting it?
07:26there's a great project in Toronto where I'm from where they designed in a wetland and
07:31Designed all their buildings to flood. So it's a shift in the paradigm again where we're using ecological resilience and
07:38Ecol ecosystems don't fight environmental pressures. They kind of learn and adapt it at multiple scales. So
07:45integrating new technology digital
07:48Technology to learn what nature is doing to be more nuanced and then make adaptations in real time
07:54Another example is like you think of your skin
07:56My skin is responding differently here than it is here. So having that more locally attuned responsive design is a key part of
08:05managing climate change reintegrating
08:07natural phenomenon into our designs
08:10And doing it in a way that you know, it doesn't make us too
08:13Uncomfortable. Oh and as good you mentioned the tech is like this isn't an anti tech thing at all
08:17I mean, there's a lot of research that goes into new materials new design processes. Like what role or you know new technologies?
08:23And yes, here's the AI question, you know, what role is AI also playing and making these ideas more feasible?
08:29This is the brilliant thing about biomimicry is that it's a bridge. It's a bridge in so many ways
08:34I work a lot with indigenous communities because it's providing me a bridge with some of their principles and thinking but it's a bridge also
08:42in terms of
08:44Historic technologies and future technologies and what I mean by that is
08:49You know, how do you
08:50harness when you do biomimicry you come up with some pretty bold kind of metaphors like what if this building could breathe like a lung
08:57Or what if the the skin of the building could breathe like skin?
09:01When you have that metaphor, it's like well, okay. How do you make that come to life?
09:04How do you do that?
09:05and that's when you start to look at the plethora of technologies that are available and see and you cherry-pick the ones that help that
09:11Metaphor come to life and and become real
09:14I do want to ask about about your role
09:16You know, you are the director of biomimicry for SJ group a big multinational construction and architecture firm
09:23Why do you think a big firm like SJ group is investing time to make a director of biomimicry position?
09:33So in my journey, I had a company and and one of the
09:41The companies within Cervantes wrong was my client and we built this relationship over time and really built out that biomimicry practice
09:48But I think what SJ did was they got on to that realization that like I said earlier
09:55Regenerative design passive design circularity all of those things already exist in nature
10:01so biomimicry is kind of this catch-all and
10:04It's a way of looking at design and in a way and yeah
10:08It's a way of looking at design. That's like perpetually trying to copy and mimic nature
10:12So I think they just saw a little bit ahead of their time because nature is also going to teach us what to do next
10:17but the cool thing is is that
10:19Although I'm the first director. We're shortly followed by Microsoft
10:22How also has a director of biomimicry in the latest regenerative design report by air up?
10:28It was co-written by a biomimicry expert. We're seeing Perkins and will purchase a company that is very biomimetic
10:35Jacob's engineering has hired a bunch of biomimicry professionals. So
10:40The cool thing is is that we're seeing this uprising and this acknowledgement that
10:45Nature is the only model of sustainability we have on this planet
10:48We're a very young species
10:50Mm-hmm
10:50And so when you use biomimicry you kind of put ourselves in our place and we can see that it can lead us for a
10:56long time
10:57You know, I've I've seen some of the some of the designs that you're putting out there that your team's putting out there
11:03I think I saw the that was at the Hive way idea
11:06It's like these hexagons that are surrounding a bridge and it's a cool-looking idea
11:11One wonders if you talk to the construction the guys they'll be like, oh, sorry boss
11:15Like this is not I mean, it's a cool idea, but it's not gonna work
11:18I mean how I mean do you ever have to feel like you have to compromise between you know
11:21There's this cool idea based off of natural ideas
11:24And then you try to work on it with the materials and the process we have and it's not possible
11:31Like do you ever have to compromise between those two things?
11:34Yeah, I mean, I guess there is compromise the point of biomimicry is to push the paradigm
11:39so you're gonna come up with bold ideas, but the point of that is to develop it's a development of
11:44Believable ideas that might not yet be possible, but but provocative conversation what could be possible
11:49but really we don't try to compromise because I I've seen in my time that the only limitation to
11:56To the application of biomimicry is creativity
11:59It's the creativity and how you abstract metaphors from nature, but also the creativity and how you can
12:05exploit or harness or use existing technologies to put
12:09put that bold idea to life and so
12:13No, I always think there's a solution
12:15It's just a matter of finding it and are there like smaller things that can be done with with building projects
12:20So not maybe like a radical change
12:22But small tweaks that can be made to really kind of you know to make our buildings more efficient better cooling
12:27Whatever you want them to do. Yeah, there's there's thousands of biomimicry technologies out there. I've been tracking them for 20 years
12:35You know cool windows that copy
12:38spider silk that reduces bird collisions by 70% you know, there's
12:44IOT technology that kind of
12:46Matches all of your electrical systems and helps them communicate similar to be beehives and how bees communicate
12:52So there's technologies you can use
12:55But you know if you want your your building to circulate better look at you know, natural models
13:00It's it's there are so many ways you can apply biomimicry to an existing building or project
13:07So I know you've had to work with kind of many many designers over the world kind of telling them how biomimicry works
13:11But you know
13:13What's kind of the one pieces of advice or the one way of thinking about this issue that you'd give to an up-and-coming designer?
13:18That wants to start looking into the space applying some of these natural techniques in the design work they're doing
13:26So there's two things. I'll say but first of all biomimicry is very simple. Maybe I'll start with this
13:32It's just it's essentially a lens that when you adopt this lens your whole world will change
13:38So I'm gonna invite you to just close your eyes for a second or just imagine a forest in your brain
13:43That forest has ancient elders that have long-lasted climate change
13:49Towers that are moving fluids up hundreds of feet without electricity
13:53Collecting solar energy with these
13:57Materials that use a subset of periodic table of elements water-based chemistry. These leaves are built in benign manufacturing
14:04They fall into a circular economy
14:07Those trees are communicating with each other through underground networks and tunnels
14:11When you start to see that nature's doing chemistry engineering design
14:16You start to realize that there's a whole world out there and to practically do biomimicry. There's two things
14:21I'll say one is to go back to that function whenever you have a design challenge
14:25Just ask how would nature do that function?
14:28And then the second part is I like to break biomimicry up into form-based biomimicry
14:33Which is copying shapes in nature to achieve a function
14:36Process-based biomimicry is manufacturing or behaving. That's like the termite mound
14:41example and then systems-based biomimicry, which is where I love to play and that's when
14:48You start to learn the subtleties of nature and you start to learn the brushstrokes
14:52It's like imagining the natural world's this beautiful piece of art and we've been asked to add to it
14:58And over hundreds of years, we've been scribbling on that piece of art
15:01But if we learn those brushstrokes we can add to it we can learn the nuances of the artist and build to the beauty
15:06All right. So with that contemplative image
15:10I'd like to kind of thank you so much Jamie for kind of introducing us this idea and all the cool
15:14Techniques materials technologies that are coming out from looking at the natural world. So everyone, please. Thank Jamie. Thank you very much
15:31You