Every day, designers strive to make better, smarter and more efficient products. Designers are innovators, and take inspiration from all around them. This, of course, includes nature. The term for this is biomimicry, simply defined as the practice of emulating nature in technological and industrial design. It’s nothing new: Leonardo da Vinci, for example, studied the anatomy and flights patterns in birds in the hope of enabling human flight.
As every company strives to differentiate their products through design, biomimicry remains a critical discipline. And in the age of a pending climate crisis where organizations are heavily focused on designing sustainable products with minimal environmental impact, the study of natural processes can be more important than ever. Nature is a good teacher: studying natural ecosystems can provide valuable insights into how technological designs and production processes can be optimized to care for the environment.
Here at Dassault Systèmes, we are steadfast in pursuing our corporate purpose: to harmonize product, nature and life. We are focused on helping our customers achieve sustainable innovations that have a positive impact on our world. We are proud that our 3DEXPERIENCE platform and its portfolio of solutions are helping people and companies of all sizes, all around the globe to create green projects and, whenever possible, apply biomimicry practices.
We recently filmed a video at the Paris Aquarium with two organizations that use our solutions to harness the power of biomimicry to bring their ideas to life. They spoke about how they found inspiration for their ideas in nature and the steps they’ve embarked on to bring their creations into the world.
EEL Energy
EEL Energy is a member of our 3DEXPERIENCE Lab, Dassault Systèmes Open innovation accelerator to nurture and empower disruptive projects by providing software, mentoring and marketing. In the video, CEO Franck Sylvain shared his company’s vision: to study the undulating swim patterns of marine animals to create an underwater structure that produced clean energy by harnessing the power of marine currents. Not only does this provide a naturally occurring non-carbon source of electricity, but marine currents are predictable in a way that other renewable sources such as solar or wind are not.
The Only Progress is Human
Through a two-year initiative, Dassault Systèmes is shedding light on 10 major challenges humanity is facing, inviting the world to discover how innovation plays a key role in addressing them. One of our challenges is Water & Consumption, and the projects from EEL Energy and Green Turtle are ideal examples of how designing products the virtual world can help us improve the real one. Because the virtual world allows us to simulate and evaluate the impact of our actions before making them real, innovators like these can create with people and the environment in mind from the very start.
Discover more about The Only Progress is Human
Alyssa is a Communications Director on the Dassault Systèmes Corporate Publishing team. She’s been part of DS for over 20 years, in roles ranging from public relations to marketing programs. Twitter: @DS_Alyssa