I first read about Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce’s innovative approach to designing buildings that suit their environment and don’t waste natural resources quite some time ago – probably about the time I read Janine Benyrus’ ground-breaking book on how we could learn to design from nature, which kicked off biomimicry.

Simply put, “biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature for inspiration to solve design problems in a regenerative way.” And that is how Pearce designs buildings in Zimbabwe, Australia, China and Somalia. Considering that operating buildings represents 40% of all the energy used by humanity,” Biomimicry notes, “learning how to design them to be more sustainable is vitally important.” This approach is catching on.