konkurs

[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

So long as it avoids a Panglossian view of nature, the science of biomimetics has the potential to enrich many
areas of technology. But accurate mimicry will require greater understanding of natural mechanisms at the
molecular scale. As this continues to unfold, emulation may increasingly give way to assimilation of biological
machinery.

There is such a long and colourful history of engineers, scientists and artificers gaining inspiration from nature that one could be forgiven
for thinking that all the best ideas have been spoken for. In the nineteenth century, biomimesis was at least as much an aesthetic as a
practical pursuit. Artists and architects delighted in Ernst Haeckel's drawings of radiolarians for their beauty alone. When the French
designer René Binet conceived of the elaborate entrance gate to the World Exposition in Paris in 1900, he told Haeckel: "everything about
it, from the general composition to the smallest details, has been inspired by your studies"1 (Fig. 1).

But others recognized the inventiveness, economy and sound engineering of nature's structures. The Wright brothers took flight after
watching vultures swoop, giving a nod to Leonardo da Vinci's explicitly aviamorphic flying machines. Joseph Paxton is said to have paid
tribute to the ribbed stem of a lily leaf in his Crystal Palace, which housed the Great Exhibition of 1851. Gustave Eiffel's tower supports
its own immense weight along elegant curves inspired by bone structure. D'Arcy Thompson2 tells how in 1866 the engineer C. Culmann
in Zürich, pondering on the design of a new construction crane, wandered into the laboratory of the anatomist Hermann Meyer who was
studying cross-sections of bone. Observing how the trabeculae of the porous material traced out lines of tension and compression, he
cried out: "That's my crane!"



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