"Inexhaustible" Inspiration: Thomas Knittel Talks Biomimicry

Amy King
Director, USGBC Leadership Institute
U.S. Green Building Council

A building shaped like a butterfly. A skyscraper modeled after self-cooling termite mounds. A structure in arid climate inspired by a desert snail. Biomimicry, the application of nature’s principles to solve problems, is an emerging influence in modern day green building and other design and technology.

Biomimicry expert, Thomas Knittel

Last month, USGBC staff were fortunate enough to hear from architect, biomimicry specialist and HOK VP Thomas Knittel, who visited our office in DC and gave a stunning presentation on biomimicry as part of USGBC’s Leadership Institute, our new leadership development initiative for staff.

I caught up with Thomas after the presentation to pick his brain even more.

Amy King: HOK is USGBC's partner on Project Haiti, our effort to build a LEED Platinum orphanage and children’s center in Port-au-Prince. How have you been able to integrate Life's Principles into the project?

Thomas Knittel: Life’s Principles were developed by Biomimicry 3.8 to describe the overarching patterns found amongst species surviving and thriving on Earth. For me, this set of six principles and 20 sub-principles identifies what you could call system-level success. Whether it is dynamism critical to homeostasis (Gaia Hypothesis), or individual parts operating in the system, these patterns are not just an ethical overlay, but common sense if we want to continue living on a planet with limited resources.