Biomimicry Institute

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Making visible nature's invisible genius. Inspiring design that heals the Earth. Join us in emulating nature's strategies for a harmonious world.

Nature is a master of optimization. Taking a cue from our oldest R&D lab, we are focusing our presence on the platforms that best serve our community. Please follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/biomimicryinstitute/) for the latest information on 🍃 http://biomimicry.org

You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter here: https://biomimicry.org/newsletter

For youth educators, find the latest offerings here: biomimicry.org/education. If you are ready to dive deeper into the Biomimicry Youth Design Challenge, visit https://biomimicry.org/youthdesignchallenge/. For innovators, visit biomimicry.org/innovation. We're dedicating this page for the educators and learners out there wanting to introduce bio-inspired design and an interdisciplinary lens on science, engineering, and environmental literacy. More about the why behind biomimicry:
Humans are clever, but without intending to, we have created massive sustainability problems for future generations. Fortunately, solutions to these global challenges are all around us. Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul. The core idea is that nature has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. After billions of years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival. Learn more at biomimicry.org.

10/15/2026

What if the blueprint for a smarter city was growing in a petri dish this whole time?
This week’s Ray of Hope Accelerator Startup Spotlight is Mireta Urban Dynamics, a team that studied something easy to overlook: how slime mold builds networks.
Physarum polycephalum, a single-celled organism with no brain, grows transport networks so efficiently that researchers have used it to recreate real-world rail maps. Over 500 million years, it refined simple physics-based growth rules that balance flow, redundancy, and resource efficiency, exactly the problems urban planners wrestle with today.
Mireta, a Harvard spinout, studied those rules and translated them into generative design algorithms. Using agent-based and hydraulic-feedback models, they help cities and developers grow infrastructure in silico the way slime mold grows in nature, already trusted by global leaders like Surbana Jurong, B+H, and McKinsey.
The results validate the science: infrastructure that’s 30-40% more material-efficient, with 40% better failure tolerance and up to 40% less traffic congestion.
Sometimes the smartest systems aren’t engineered. They’re grown.

Learn more at www.miretaurban.com

Save the date + register today for Demo Day, December 9: https://luma.com/oikavvkx

09/29/2026

Biological systems are shaped by the specific resources, organisms, and pressures present in a given place. Fashion's decomposer function works the same way, in that it rarely follows a single blueprint, because ecological systems never do. They form from what is locally available, in response to what is locally needed.

In her latest blog post for the , digs into what the Nature of Fashion case studies are teaching us about place.

Read it now: https://biomimicry.org/what-the-nature-of-fashion-pilots-are-teaching-us-about-place/

09/25/2026

Why does "patient capital" still sound like an oxymoron in fashion?

At our LCAW roundtable, this was the question underpinning the conversation about funding a regenerative fashion industry. Innovation that works with natural systems – not against them – doesn't move at the pace brands and investors expect.

As NY Climate Week wraps up, financing conversations are still fresh in the room – and we're not done asking: what would it actually take for patient capital to become the norm, not the exception?

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09/10/2026

The built environment shapes how billions of people live in relationship to the natural world.

It is also one of the leading drivers of biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, and resource extraction on the planet.

Signing the Nature Positive Buildings, Cities & Infrastructure Pledge is a public declaration that your work is committed to changing that. That the buildings, cities, and infrastructure you help create will give more life than they take.

The solutions exist. What has been missing is a shared commitment to act on them together.

Sign today: https://biomimicry.org/buildings-cities-infrastructure-pledge/

09/03/2026

500 million years of R&D. Fungi are leading the bioremediation space. 🍄

Our first 2026 Ray of Hope Accelerator Spotlight kicks off today with Fungi Life (), proof that fungi figured out bioremediation long before we did.

Their strategy: release biosurfactants to make hydrophobic pollutants accessible, then deploy oxidative enzymes to break them apart. No live cells needed, just the chemistry itself.

Fungi Life, a female-led team in Medellín, Colombia, studied this system and engineered it into FungiRestore, a cell-free formulation built from a fungal strain isolated from oil-contaminated soil. The results speak for themselves: 90%+ of petroleum hydrocarbons removed in 45 days, outperforming conventional methods by 200%, at 20% lower cost and a 95% smaller carbon footprint.

Study first. Engineer second. That’s the biomimicry way.

Learn more about Fungi Life: www.fungilife.net

Save the date + register today for Demo Day, December 9: https://luma.com/oikavvkx

A special thank you to our legacy supporter, .

08/11/2026

Nature figured out high-performance stretch long before we did—and without leaving any waste behind.

Fashion is still catching up. Elastane, the fibre behind your favourite stretchy jeans and activewear, is fossil-based—and even in small amounts, it’s enough to block textile recycling entirely.

Fashion for Good’s Katrin Ley breaks down how their Stretching Circularity Project is working to change that—testing bio-based alternatives to conventional elastane, and the recycling systems needed to bring them full circle.

Visit the Biomimicry Blog through the link in our bio to read the full article.

07/28/2026

The Biomimicry Institute has released the completed case studies from its Nature of Fashion: Design for Transformation initiative, a multi-year program that began with a single question: what would the fashion industry look like if it actually operated like a natural ecosystem?

The answer that emerged from the years of pilot work across three countries points to something the industry has largely overlooked: decomposition.

With thanks to The Or Foundation, Circle Economy, Beneficial Design Institute, and

The Biomimicry Institute has released the completed case studies from its Nature of Fashion: Design for Transformation initiative, a multi-year program that began with a single question: what would the fashion industry look like if it actually operated like a natural ecosystem?

The answer that emerged from the years of pilot work across three countries points to something the industry has largely overlooked: decomposition.

With thanks to The Or Foundation, Circle Economy, Beneficial Design Institute, and

Accra’s Kantamanto Market and the nearby Korle Lagoon are both responding to a crisis they didn’t create. The Or Foundation’s documentation centers on what the lagoon’s biological systems are already revealing about the fashion system’s limits.

Accra’s Kantamanto Market and the nearby Korle Lagoon are both responding to a crisis they didn’t create. The Or Foundation’s documentation centers on what the lagoon’s biological systems are already revealing about the fashion system’s limits.

The Or Foundation

Accra’s Kantamanto Market and the nearby Korle Lagoon are both responding to a crisis they didn’t create. The Or Foundation’s documentation centers on what the lagoon’s biological systems are already revealing about the fashion system’s limits.

The Or Foundation

Breaking down to build up, just like nature does.

Beneficial Design Institute

Breaking down to build up, just like nature does.

Beneficial Design Institute

Breaking down to build up, just like nature does.

Beneficial Design Institute

Hard-to-recycle textile waste doesn’t have to be a dead end.

Circle Economy

Hard-to-recycle textile waste doesn’t have to be a

07/07/2026

June took Nature of Fashion from Amsterdam to Berlin to London to Brussels – and the throughline across every room was the same: nature isn’t a metaphor for transformation anymore, it’s the design brief.

Swipe through for the highlights 👉

📷 Jan Khür / Abrakadabra Studio

Katapult Future Fest | Amsterdam, NL

🌱 Katapult Future Fest (Katapult Future Fest) – where investors and practitioners asked what it actually means to fund and build like an ecosystem, leaping from the traditional mechanistic view.

📷 Jan Khür / Abrakadabra Studio

Fashion For Good Innovation Fest | Amsterdam, NL

🧪 Fashion for Good’s Innovation Fest (Fashion for Good) – confirming what we’ve long believed: the innovation gap in fashion isn’t invention anymore, it’s integration.

Innovationstag Mittelstand | Berlin, DE

🔬 Innovationstag Mittelstand – we showed up to support our partners at Beneficial Design Institute as they joined a panel on knowledge transfer, talking microalgae cultivation and giving low-value textile waste a second life beyond fashion.

Beneficial Design Institute

London Climate Action Week | London, UK

☕ London Climate Action Week – we hosted a breakfast roundtable where the room got energized about one thing: fashion’s toughest waste challenges look different through a nature-inspired lens.

Future Fabrics Expo | Brussels, BE

🍄 Future Fabrics Expo (Future Fabrics Expo) – There was an entire section dedicated to biodegradation – fashion discovering how to fall apart well. Amanda took the stage for “Circularity and Degradation: Learning From Nature,” unpacking what the industry can borrow from nature’s oldest process: build, break down, build again.

Grateful to everyone who shared a room, a question, or a meal with us in June 🌿
For more insights into this month’s reflections head to our blog – link in bio 📖

📷 Jan Khür / Abrakadabra Studio

06/19/2026

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when news of freedom finally reached Galveston, Texas.

Nature has always understood what this day teaches: freedom is not a moment. It is a movement, patient and persistent.

Seeds crack stone to reach the light. Rivers carve canyons one grain at a time. Roots lift sidewalks. Mycelium restores soil that was stripped bare, working unseen until the forest returns. Monarchs cross a continent no single butterfly will ever see completed, each generation carrying the journey forward.

Life always moves toward freedom. It finds the opening, makes the path, and creates conditions where more life can flourish.

Today we honor that same persistence in human history, the resilience of those who carried freedom forward across generations, and the deep ecological knowledge that guided so many on their way: navigating by the North Star, reading the moss, following the waterways.

Nature teaches us that flourishing is something we create together. So is freedom.

06/16/2026

Beneath every forest floor is a governance system that has been running for 3.8 billion years.

Mycelium connects trees across vast networks. When one is under threat, the network responds. When a seedling needs resources, a hub tree shares them.
No board vote. No single point of failure. Just distributed intelligence, moving where it's needed.

Nature figured this out long before we built our first org chart.

Bringing Nature on Board is a four-week course on AskNature Learning exploring how organizations are putting this into practice — drawing on First Nations knowledge, ecological principles, and case studies from 30+ organizations around the world.

Facilitated by Dr. Dominique Hes, Voice of Nature on the board of Regen Melbourne.

By week four, you'll have an action plan for your own organization. Not theory. Practice.

Register today: biomimicry.org/asknature-learning/

📅 Mondays Aug. 10, 17, 24, 31 | 3:30–5pm PT

📅 Tuesdays Aug. 11, 18, 25 + Sept. 1 | 8:30–10am AEST

Recordings available for all registrants.

AskNature Hive members save $100 (code in the Watering Hole)
Students save 20% — DM us or email [email protected]

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Missoula, MT
59718

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http://www.biomimicry.org/

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