Humans often look to nature to solve real world problems through biomimetics — from the Latin for “imitating life”. After all, natural selection has generated numerous incredible, well-adapted structures and materials over the course of evolution.
Scientists are now drawing inspiration from nature to build the cities of the future, with the goal of supporting an ever-expanding population, while keeping carbon emissions under control.
The cities of today are built with concrete and steel, which are unsustainable materials because they get processed at extremely high temperatures that require a lot of energy. Bioengineers like Michelle Oyen from Cambridge University are searching for environmentally friendly solutions.
“What we’re trying to do is to rethink the way that we make things,” she says in a press release. “Engineers tend to throw energy at problems, whereas nature throws information at problems — they fundamentally do things differently.”
In her lab, Oyen is constructing small samples of artificial bone and eggshell, which could eventually be scaled up and used as low-carbon building materials.
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