How can biomimicry help in our shift from an industrial to an ecological society? This essential question is the topic of discussion during Michael Pawlyn’s expert lecture at Material Xperience 2014.

Most people now accept the case for sustainability and many wonder how the debate will move forward over the next few decades. Some commentators have asserted that biomimicry will be one of the main design tools that facilitate the shift from the industrial age to the ecological age of mankind. Michael Pawlyn is one of the experts with the knowledge and vision to show us how.

This rapidly emerging discipline draws on a source-book of solutions that have benefited from a 3.8 billion year research and development period. In this talk, he will describe three crucial changes that we need to bring about.

These three vital transformations are, firstly, radical increases in resource efficiency. Shifting from a linear, and wasteful or polluting way of using resources, towards a completely closed-loop model is the next. The third, and perhaps the most challenging, is moving from a fossil fuel economy to a solar economy.

He will illustrate the talk with a number of recent projects that show how biomimicry can be used to develop ideas that go beyond standard approaches to sustainability.

Michael Pawlyn has been described as a pioneer of biomimicry and established Exploration Architecture in 2007 to focus exclusively on this emerging discipline. In 2007 Michael Pawlyn delivered a talk at Google’s annual ‘Zeitgeist’ conference and, in 2011, became one of only a small handful of architects to have a talk published on TED.

Within our theme, The Smart Environment, this presentation is part of the series that Materia has organised for MX2014. Have a look at the entire Material Xperience 2014 speakers’ programme. For your free ticket, register here.