since the very beginning of time,
we've been trying to recreate what nature put in front of our eyes
nature seems to hold some kind of secret that makes it both beautiful and resilient and we've
been obsessed with trying to replicate that ability after thousands of years we've been
pretty successful in creating our own version of the world but this is the first time in history
that we've actually had the technology to really extract the secrets of Nature and replicate some
of its very elegant designs I'm sure you've noticed more and more buildings popping up
that are inspired by nature but similar to what we're seeing with AI right now just because we
can doesn't mean we should so copying nature is it fundamentally flawed does nature really
have the answer to a better future does it even make sense to scale these designs
portion of this video is sponsored by AG1
I'm not a religious person but I had something very close to a spiritual
experience when I first visited Sagrada Familia suddenly I was floating in this
strange Forest built out of bones or sand crafted with such detail and a ceiling
that reminded me of the sky the forest the sun and the universe all at the same time
Gaudi was obsessed with nature and for him it was the ultimate source of inspiration he would
study ants tree snakes skeletons and when he was commissioned as big projects to Sagrada Familia
the place of God he tried to extract those lessons and recreate them in his building so if you go in
this building most people will probably say that it feels organic but there's actually a logical
reason for this feeling he realized nature had a series of geometric rules the hyperbolic
paraboloid the conoid a double turn helicoidal shape creating a structure now known as a fractal
but he's probably best known for his extensive use of catenary arches which is formed when a chain of
uniform density is hung from two points creating a shape that's in complete tension when you
inverse this you get a shape that's in complete compression you could probably call his designs an
early form of biomimicry which is defined as the design and production of materials structures and
systems that are modeled on biological entities and processes but when Gaudi started the project
in 1882 they didn't really have parametric software and in fact they didn't even have
computers so he constructed models using way to change then he would either place a mirror or take
photographs and flip it upside down to understand the structure of the building the problem is that
this project is uh never finished it's been going on for more than a hundred years and it's supposed
to finally finish in 2026 and I think that's the problem with buildings inspired by Nature
even though they can be incredibly beautiful compared to a standard boxy building they can be
extremely hard to build and it can consume a lot of resources alright let's look at another example
this is a Venus Flower Basket sea sponge it looks very delicate but it's got a very strong lattice
structure that provides stiffness while being able to bend at the intersections meaning it
can Flex without damaging the core Arrangement the rounded shape disperses the forces from the strong
currents and this mesh forms a hollow basket that allows water and nutrition to filter through
you've probably seen this building before it's the iconic building in the London Skyline known
as the Gherkin which is probably a more catchy name than the Venus Flower Basket sea sponge
but this building mimics the shape and structure of the sponge and basically does the same thing
but in air the rounded shape allows the air to flow smoothly around the building which creates
pressure differences that power the natural ventilation system so it's not only mimicking
the form but it's also mimicking the function and performance of the organism the system guides
fresh air into atriums at every six stories which is distributed to each floor through its double
facade this double skin facade also provides extra insulation in the winters and this entire system
reduces the power consumption of the building by 50 percent or that's what it was supposed to be
in 2005 one of the operable Windows broke off the facade and they decided to limit the use
of this passive ventilation system and now it just operates on a very standard mechanical ventilation
system just like any other building actually when we were doing research for this video we could
only find a handful of truly successful examples that really seem to emulate the
design and principles of nature even the watercube building in Beijing inspired by soap bubbles which
received lead gold has a 30 reduction in energy consumption compared to similar buildings to build
this it used 90 kilometers of Steel it's a hundred thousand square meters of plastic it's not really
the most sustainable material this really makes me wonder is it practical to scale Nature's designs
I've been following these guys since I was in architecture school every
year the research group at itke built these biomimic every year the research
group at biometric started the research group at itke built these biomimic biomip
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okay as I was saying the research group at itke built these biomimetic Pavilions every year not
using standard materials like concrete and steel but new high performing materials this was their
first Pavilion in 2010 where they explore the structural capacities and the elastic bending
behavior of birch plywood strips they input the material properties into a digital model
and once they come up with an ideal form they used a six axis robot to manufacture
the pieces which they assembled manually on site similarly in 2011 they used a digital
model to simulate the material behavior and form they use a robotic arm to manufacture
the pieces which then they manually assembled on site in 2012 see what a big leap that is
from this to this this design was based off their analysis of a lobster's exoskeleton and this year
The Pavilion was entirely robotically fabricated this is from the team
so what they're trying to say is they couldn't just replicate the structural Arrangement at
an abstract level using any material because this type of structure would only work with a
unique material properties of the biological role model in this case the chicken fibers found in
the lobsters so they had to find a material with similar properties in this case carbon
and glass fiber Composites and because this material had never been used this way before
they had to think of a new way of using it bye again inputting the material properties into a
digital model and simulating a structure that would optimize the capabilities of
this material all of this led to a really cool ass looking form as well as an extremely high
performing structure only four millimeters of opposite laminate while spanning 8 meters
2013 was the first time they used microcomputer tomography in their process which gave them the
ability to analyze this time a beetle Shell at a very intricate level from this they discovered
that the shawl is a double layer structure connected by curve support elements kind of
like a column the fiber layout within this column which is called the trabecula merges
the upper and lower shawl segments based on this they also developed a double layered
modular system again using carbon and glass fiber Composites and basically they weaved it
together using another new method two mirin Kuka robots a slave robot and a master robot foreign
so what I'm trying to show you here is with every new technology that's introduced into
the system they're able to more closely mimic Nature's designs and they're able
to better optimize the characteristics of each material leading to stronger and more resource
efficient structures that don't really look like anything else that's been built before
just last year they introduced a new challenge into the mix a Sustainable Building Material
flax fibers the renewable and biodegradable and they're comparable and their structural
properties as the glass and carbon fiber but they have a much lower embodied energy
taking this idea one step further this is a five meter tall structure by Nary oxman
Studio made entirely of cells of living organisms AKA biopolymers it's made of
80 water 20 trees Apple skins and shrimp cells which are some of the most common biopolymers
on our planet here they 3D print the material into a layered structure that combines elements
that are like shells and also like skins creating a kind of Bio composite the idea
is that over its lifespan the structure reacts to the environment changing in
shape or color or rigidity depending on the temperature or humidity or sunlight
I don't know how we could scale the size of a building per se but biopolymers do
have really great insulation properties and they can regulate moisture as well and the
point here is that these biocompositions can be specifically combined and tuned to
the kind of behavior that you're looking for imagine we could build buildings or
Towers or even cities as living organisms that adapt and respond to their environment
and at the end of the building's life cycle it just decomposes into the Earth
but what if we didn't design at all and instead of mimicking nature we just let nature design
in the silk Pavilion project by by Nary oxman and our team they co-created a six meter tall
fiber structure with silkworms they found that the silkworms distribute themselves
based on the environmental conditions like gravity heat and light so in order to control
the density of the silkworms in turn the density of the fabric they've designed a
robotic Gloom which would rotate in order to control these environmental conditions
the primary structure was a kind of scaffolding made of soluble knit which provided a template
that the silkworms could follow so going Beyond just sustainability or optimizing the material
properties this new way of co-creating with other species and designing the process not
just the final form it gives each structure its own kind of expression kind of a soul
I find it kind of comforting that in nature there's logic and reason behind every single
shape every single curvature every single hair there's a seamless connection between function
and form which lead to designs that make the most optimal use of resources and that's probably
because Nature has been developing and iterating through these designs for like 3.8 billion years
dumping the bad ones and letting the Smart Ones continue on the smartest part of nature is that
it's a closed-loop system where the death of one organism means the nutrients for another
where different species can coexist and thrive in a symbiotic relationship sometimes totally weird
relationships remember the Venus Flower Basket sea sponge this creature has a very interesting
relationship with a particular type of deep sea shrimp when a young shrimp meets his partner
they take shelter in the sponge which protects it from predators the skeletal framework as we talked
about before it allows the nutrients to filter through and this feeds the shrimp in return the
shrimp cleaned the inside of the sponge but once this shrimp couple grows older they become too
big to fit through the mesh and they're trapped in there until they die their offspring however are
small enough to fit through so they can leave to find their own partners and also their own
Flower Basket that's nature it's a beautiful and smart system but it's a system of give and take
we've just been taking and taking and taking for so long using the Earth as
our playground that I think we've completely forgotten that we're a part of this system and
one day in a not so distant future we're also gonna have to give back
thanks for watching guys if you guys are interested in all the research that didn't
make it into this video you can find our research booklet down in the description
also I have a Discord server and a newsletter I'll leave those in
the description as well and with that I'll see you guys in the next video
thank you