5 amazing biomimicry examples providing real sustainability solutions | Architecture Building Energy

hi folks Alex here if we break down our co2 emissions worldwide it is clear that buildings and energy are two sectors where we need to do better nature has been doing research and development for 3.8 billion years so let's look at five ways nature can help us we're going to talk about schools of fish bees termites Jackrabbits coral and more the music for this video is also inspired by nature I will tell you more about it at the end okay let's get drawing if you are new here this is the channel where we share tools for you to change the world I started the video talking about co2 emissions as being a negative thing well they don't have to be nature does not see carbon as a problem it sees it as a building block nature uses co2 as a raw material to build things such as trees leaves algae shells etc coral reefs are also made of carbon more precisely corals hard exoskeleton is made of calcium carbonate corals combine carbon dioxide and minerals in the seawater to make it a few years ago a researcher took this recipe to turn carbon dioxide and seawater into calcium carbonate which is then used to make concrete while a tonne of traditional cement produces about a ton of co2 a ton of cement produced with this method sequester's half a ton of co2 and it takes less energy to make as well how come they never told me that in several engineering school now what do we do with this coal cement we can make buildings but even after construction buildings tend to produce a lot of carbon dioxide remember our graph from the beginning 25% of the total co2 emissions worldwide are attributed to heat and energy and residential and commercial buildings are responsible for about half this 25% traditional heating ventilation and cooling also know HVAC systems can be very wasteful and burn a lot of fossil fuels with nearly 60% of a building's energy consumption allocated to heating and cooling we definitely need to do better on this how does nature do it as it turns out termites also need to ventilate and control the temperature inside their Mound but they don't use fossil fuels inspired by the termite mounds architect Mick Pearce designed is gate the largest commercial building in Zimbabwe this way like a mound the Eastgate building uses thermal mass to store the heat during the day and releases it during the night the building also has many chimneys and air channels to allow the building to breathe during the night the cool air from outside cools down the core of the building during the day the large central chimney creates a closed convection cycle sending the hot air up and out of the building constantly calling the core the large amount of surface area around the building helps dissipate the heat during the day while increasing heat loss during the night like the large ears of jack rabbits and elephants help them regulate their body temperature as a result the building uses 35% less energy than other buildings in the same city some of Mick Pierce's other buildings in Melbourne use up to 70 to 80 percent less energy than other buildings in the city this was an example of HVAC for a tall structure but anthills can achieve similar result underground when a breeze blows on top of the hill it draws the air out of the hill and fresh air comes in through the channels built on the outside this is a well known fluid mechanics phenomenon called the Coanda effect another way in which HVAC systems can waste energy occurs when parts of equipment in the system operate in isolation without communicating with each other as a result various parts can operate similar honestly and spend energy unnecessarily well bees don't do that they coordinate individual behavior to better serve the collective using the swarm intelligence of bees the company and cycle offers a service called swarm logic that connects the appliances together as a way to spread out energy demand among them reducing peak demand by 25% and unnecessary energy consumption by up to 30% now that we know how to heat and cool our building we still need energy for lights and machines right well schools of fish can help Caltech researcher John de buri notice that schooling fish can swim together without interfering with one another each fish creates many small vortices behind them as the swim using this idea he created vertical axis wind turbines that can work well together in close proximity while traditional ones interfere with one another the bearish wind turbines actually feed off one another increasing their efficiency and making the most of the area available with optimal positioning a vertical axis wind farm could produce 10 times the amount of wind energy generated by a common horizontal turbine wind farm for renewable energy in urban areas thus wind tree is visually inspired by nature 26 feet high and quiet one tree can power a four person home or 15 LED streetlights or 1,000 square feet of low consumption office space or sixteen thousand kilometres of an electric car there are solutions all around us sometimes we just need to change the way we think about things if you have other cool biomimicry examples that directly contribute to sustainability please let me know in the comments below the music in this video was created by Val a a French musician and singer who uses nature to create her music huge thanks to her I am so excited and grateful that she offered to share her music in this video if you found this video useful please share and subscribe to the channel for more if you want to help this channel grow you can make on patreon a pledge of one dollar or more that will apply to the new videos that we'll post in the future thank you to all the patrons who made this video as possible and thank you for watching

Channel: Sustainability Illustrated

Views: 43,795

Rating: 4.9744897 out of 5

Keywords: biomimicry, biomimicry examples, examples, sustainability, architecture, biomimicry architecture, energy, design, nature, inspiration, innovation, biomimicry termite building, heating, cooling, sustainable, hvac, vertical wind turbine, coral, cement, bees, swarm intelligence, sustainable development, biomimicry architecture buildings, biomimetics, janine benyus, biomimicry design, biomimicry explained, sustainability illustrated, whiteboard animation, education, national geographic, eastgate centre

Id: 5FZ9Ryx5zAk

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Sustain-Illustrated]

Do you know other good ones that did not make it in this video?

[u/edumerco]

Edit: sorry, replied to the wrong post. :) (Small screens...). :)