Values
Six values sit above the principles. The principles say what the products must do. The values say how we design, and why.
A vehicle can behave like an organism: it takes in energy from sunlight, manages its heat by circulating fluid, rests in a compact form and opens when conditions suit it. A dragonfly turns most of its energy into heat and moves that heat with its heart; a solar wing turns most of its sunlight into heat and can move it with vein-like channels.
The goal is a self-sustaining transport product: one that can harness energy from its surroundings for propulsion and function. Since 1987 the World Solar Challenge has run solar cars 3,022 km from Darwin to Adelaide. The task is to take that from the race to the everyday product.
A product designed this way reads its environment and responds. Percher dragonflies control their temperature by pointing their bodies toward or away from the sun. Biomimicry 3.8 lists “be locally attuned and responsive” among its Life’s Principles.
Work with sun, wind, heat and landscape rather than overpowering them. The phrase is Ian McHarg’s (1969). Van der Ryn and Cowan made it a principle of ecological design, with “solutions grow from place” and “make nature visible”.
In an ecosystem one organism’s waste is another’s food and energy moves through the whole. At Kalundborg in Denmark, since 1972, companies have exchanged steam, heat, water and ash. For design it means products that share energy with each other and with the places they stop.
Beauty is a reason to make things well, and a reason people keep and care for what they own. William Morris asked for nothing “that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. An insect wing is both.
The evidence
Each value comes with its lineage, the designers and scientists who got there first, and with the evidence, including where an appealing story about nature turned out to be wrong.
| Case | What was borrowed | What happened | The lesson |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shinkansen 500 series JR-West, 1997 | The kingfisher’s beak, which enters water with little splash, as the shape of the train’s nose. | The train ran 10% faster on 15% less electricity, and the boom it made leaving tunnels was gone. | A borrowed form works when it solves the same physical problem. |
| Eastgate Centre, Harare Mick Pearce with Arup, 1996 | Termite-mound ventilation as passive cooling for an office building. | Reported to use about a tenth of the energy of a conventionally cooled building. Later field work found mounds are wind-driven lungs, not chimneys. | The building worked because it was well engineered, not because the biology was right. Check the biology. |
| Mercedes-Benz Bionic Concept car, 2005 | The boxfish’s body, thought to be stable and low-drag. | A drag coefficient of 0.19. A 2015 study found the boxfish is neither self-stabilising nor especially low-drag. | A good result can rest on a wrong premise. Measure the organism. |
| Munich Olympic roof Frei Otto, 1972 | Minimal surfaces found with soap films, and the logic of spider webs. | A lightweight cable-net roof still admired fifty years on. | Structure found from nature’s rules can be efficient and beautiful at once. |
| Earwig-fan deployables Kyushu 2020; BionicWingSat 2023 | The fold pattern and elastic joints of the earwig hindwing. | Design software for fans, and a self-deploying CubeSat wing tested in zero gravity. | The insect’s fold, measured, turned into rules, then flown. |
An aesthetic
The products should be recognisable as a family. Six elements carry the idea from the insect to the thing that is made.
In the insect: A compact resting form and a large open form, both complete.
A product must look finished closed and open. Neither is a compromise of the other.
In the insect: Veins that are at once structure, plumbing and pattern.
Visible ribs that carry load and coolant. The structure is the ornament.
In the insect: Thin, light and often clear between the veins.
Cells where the light is useful, translucent panels where it is not.
In the insect: Hard covers that protect the folded wing.
A durable outer skin that closes against hail, dust and night.
In the insect: Opening is slow at emergence and fast in flight.
Opening and closing as choreography: calm, legible, a small daily event people enjoy.
In the insect: Colours and forms suited to where the insect lives.
Australian light: graphite, photovoltaic indigo and copper, and forms that belong in the landscape.
Awe
E. O. Wilson called the instinct to respond to living things biophilia (1984). Terrapin Bright Green’s 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design (2014) turned it into design guidance, and its tenth-anniversary edition added a fifteenth pattern: awe.
A thing that opens its wings to the sun is meant to be felt as well as used.
Designing with nature in Australia also means designing with Country. The NSW Government Architect’s Connecting with Country framework (2023) asks designers to begin with the knowledge of Aboriginal communities. Mattara is based on Ngunnawal Country. That relationship is built through partnership with Traditional Custodians, not by borrowing words or images.