Biomimicry looks to nature for helping us engineer human products such as vernacular design

For years, scientists believed the exceptional fertility of tropical Ferralsols—a crumbly, porous soil found in regions like the Brazilian Cerrado and parts of West Africa—was simply the result of mineral weathering. But new research has cracked open that theory, revealing a hidden network of co-engineers: termites and ants. These social insects have not just inhabited these soils—they’ve built them.

In a landmark perspective published in Pedosphere Dr. Ary Bruand and colleagues at France’s Institut des Sciences de la Terre d’Orléans trace how millions of generations of termites and ants have sculpted the structure of Ferralsols. By transporting minerals from deep underground and engineering an intricate system of tunnels, these insects have created the porous, breathable soils that support some of the world’s richest tropical biodiversity and agriculture.

“This is like discovering that the pyramids weren’t built by natural erosion, but by ancient engineers,” said Bruand. “These insects have been performing ecosystem services worth billions of dollars, completely unnoticed. Their soil structures are more sophisticated than anything we’ve designed in labs.”

The team used advanced microscopy and chemical tracing to map the fingerprints of insect activity across Ferralsol profiles from three continents. Their findings are striking: termites, possibly in search of scarce minerals like sodium, mine materials from depths of up to 10 meters. They transport these nutrients to the surface, where ants help redistribute and stabilize them—creating honeycomb-like soil microstructures that resist compaction, retain water, and allow roots to thrive.

Yet this partnership is under threat. In regions where native vegetation is converted to cropland, termite and ant populations decline rapidly. In Ivory Coast, the team observed a 60% drop in these soil-structuring insects just five years after agricultural expansion. Water retention and crop yields followed the same downward trajectory.

For scientists, the implications go beyond soil science. The biological design principles embedded in Ferralsols could inspire new directions in vernacular architecture, permaculture, and even regenerative land use. Termite mounds—known for their natural ventilation and climate regulation—have long fascinated architects. Now, this new research offers a soil-level perspective on bioengineering that’s been quietly evolving for tens of thousands of years.

Related: Dubai develops a museum for soil

“We must develop farming systems that work with these natural builders, not against them,” said Bruand. “The future of tropical agriculture may depend on whether we can protect these underground allies.”

Designers and architects interested in sustainable land-based development can take cues from this research:

• Leave vegetation corridors between cultivated fields to allow for recolonization of native insects.
• Explore soil biomimicry by replicating termite-built structures in agricultural substrates.
• Develop bio-inspired building materials that mimic the thermal and structural logic of insect habitats.

Policymakers, too, may begin using insect abundance as a new indicator of soil health. Researchers are already exploring rapid field tests to measure the “biological soil structure potential”—a kind of ecological fingerprint left by these ancient builders.

The message is clear: these insects have solved problems of drainage, drought, and compaction long before humans ever arrived. Protecting them isn’t just conservation—it’s smart design.

The post How Termites and Ants Built the Tropics’ Best Soil appeared first on Green Prophet.

Catfish and all manners of fish have a mucus and slimy outer coating on their bodies making them hard to hold onto. That mucus might be the key to the next antibiotic, say scientists who have worked with the skin of the scaleless, farmed African catfish.

Additional testing is necessary to prove the compound is safe and effective for use as future antibiotic, but it could be a potent new tool against antimicrobial-resistant bacteria such as extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing E. coli.

Read Also: Biomimicry in buildings

“The global public health threat due to antimicrobial resistance necessitates the search for safe and effective new antibacterial compounds,” says Hedmon Okella, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, and led the project.“In this case, fish-derived antimicrobial peptides present a promising source of potential leads.”

For the study, the researchers extracted several peptides (short chains of amino acids) from African catfish skin mucus and used machine learning algorithms to screen them for potential antibacterial activity.

They then chemically synthesized the most promising peptide, called NACAP-II, and tested its efficacy and safety on ESBL-E. coli and mammalian blood cells, respectively.

These tests showed that NACAP-II caused the bacteria to break open, or lyse, without appearing to harm the mammalian blood cells. “Preliminary findings indicate that this promising peptide candidate potentially disrupts the bacterial cell envelope to cause lysis at a very low concentration,” Okella said.

The place where the peptide was found — in the mucus on the skin of farmed African catfish — is not as unlikely as it may seem. As anyone who has tried to hold one can attest, fish are enveloped in a slippery layer of mucus. This mucus is known to protect the fish against infections by physically carrying germs off of the skin and by producing antimicrobial compounds such as the one Okella’s team isolated.

Read Also: 7 Gulf fish totally okay to eat

Many existing medicines are based on compounds that were first found in nature, and scientists speculate that marine and aquatic organisms represent a particularly rich — though largely untapped — source of bioactive compounds. Ever pick up a snail and try to wash off the slime it leaves behind?

As a next step, the researchers plan to study the peptide’s effects in animal models and explore strategies to produce it inexpensively. “We are currently utilizing chemical synthesis to upscale the production of this peptide that we believe will one day be of use as drug candidate in the battle against antimicrobial resistance,” Okella said.

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New research shows that some antifreeze proteins can do both

Antifreeze is life’s means of surviving in cold winters: Natural antifreeze proteins help fish, insects, plants and even bacteria live through low temperatures that should turn their liquid parts to deadly shards of ice. Strangely enough, in very cold conditions, the same proteins can also promote the growth of ice crystals.

This was the finding of experiments carried out in Israel and Germany using proteins taken from fish and beetles. The results of this study, recently published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, could have implications for understanding the basic processes of ice formation.

Antifreeze proteins do not prevent ice from forming in the first place. They wrap themselves around tiny ice crystals – the nuclei that provide the “template” for growing larger ice crystals – and stop them from growing. Flour beetle larvae, for example, have such proteins on their outer shells, to keep away ice that could break their fragile skin.

The scientists wanted to compare the antifreeze proteins to natural proteins that can promote the growth of ice crystals. Some bacteria, for example, are known to grow sharp ice crystals that then split the skins of ripe tomatoes. Although it was believed that these two kinds of protein were very different, previous scientific studies suggested that they were more similar than thought.

The basic premise was based on the idea that antifreeze proteins have an active site that can bind to ice; and an ice binding site can support the formation of an initial ice nucleus that has the potential to grow into an ice crystal.  The problem was that, until now, there had been little way to truly isolate the actions of these biological molecules.

The present study was led by Prof. Thomas Koop of Bielefeld University in Germany, and, in collaboration with the group of Prof. Ido Braslavsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Yinon Rudich of the Weizmann Institute of Science. It was made possible by a device developed in the group of Prof. Yinon Rudich, which they dubbed WISDOM (Weizmann Supercooled Droplets Observation on a Microarray).

This microfluidic device has micron-sized channels and droplet traps that enabled the researchers to capture microdroplets of ultra-pure water on each chip. They then added carefully measured amounts of antifreeze proteins purified from flour beetle larvae or from a fish that lives in the arctic year-round.

Once the antifreeze proteins were added to the droplets, they were cooled to chilling temperatures. The water was still liquid, even though it had already been cooled to well below its normal freezing point (thus, supercooled), in part because it was lacking the impurities that normally make our water turn into ice cubes at 0 degrees. Ice thus formed in the samples only as the water temperature dropped below minus 30. This setup enabled the group to be sure that any ice-forming or -preventing activity was solely due to the actions of the proteins.

While in pure water microdroplets with nothing added, ice would begin to form at around 38.5 degrees below zero, in around half of the samples with antifreeze proteins, ice crystals began forming at a higher temperature – close to minus 34. In other words, at certain temperatures, which are extreme but not unknown on the planet, the antifreeze actually becomes pro-freeze, initiating the growth of ice crystals.

The group compared these findings to what is known about the natural proteins that promote the growth of ice crystals (ice-nucleating proteins, or INPs). INPs can efficiently form ice at higher temperatures than those in which the antifreeze proteins switched to ice production. The scientists posit that the main difference is in the size of the proteins – INPs are substantially larger. Thus this finding adds to our understanding of both ice formation and prevention. For Prof. Rudich, whose work focuses on atmosphere and climate, it may help shed light on the physical processes that affect cloud formation, in which proteins and other complex molecules have an impact on the development of ice crystals in clouds.

Antifreeze proteins like those in the fish are used today, among other things, to keep ice cream smooth and to keep outside surfaces frost-free. This study suggests that these proteins may have limitations, and could actually promote ice buildup when exposed to extremely cold temperatures such as those that hit the North American continent this year. INPs have their uses as well, for examples in ski resorts that want to extend their seasons, so this study on antifreeze proteins could even point to ways of creating better ice-forming ones.

The post Can anti-freeze materials found in nature make stronger ice? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Italian architect Arturo Vittori and his colleague Andreas Vogler designed a low-tech machine, based on passive design, that can produce between 50 and 100 liters of clean drinking water daily, without electrical equipment and independent of land-based water sources.

This inexpensive, easily assembled tower was designed specifically for rural communities in Ethiopia that lack access to safe drinking water. Turns out these 30-foot-tall, sculptural towers that pull potable water from the air can be deployed most anywhere, including the deserts of the Middle East.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=rDXWK5GRaiQ

Warka water towers collect rainwater and extract clean water from fog and dew. They are made from biodegradable materials that can be sustainably sourced and locally fabricated as ready-to-assemble kits that cost about $1,000 USD to produce. With minimal training, a team of four to six unskilled villagers can construct one in a day. Assembly is straightforward, using basic tools. 

The biomimetric design, based on passive design, is informed by the natural water-collecting properties of Namib beetles, termite hives, and cacti. It incorporates cultural references such as Ethiopian basket weaving, traditional fish trap design, and the Warka tree, an indigenous fig tree whose shade provides a traditional place of village gathering.

Fog-harvesting devices are not new, but Vittori’s version yields more water at a lower cost than earlier concepts.  One of his first Warka prototypes is pictured above.

The tower consists of lightweight and flexible bamboo stalks, woven to allow unobstructed airflow and stability in the face of strong wind. It’s “crown” is designed to deter bird perching. A nylon mesh net hangs inside and collects dew drops that form along its surface. As air temperatures drop, the droplets gravitate down into a container at the tower bottom where it passes through a tube to people on the ground.

System maintenance is also simple, requiring regular monitoring and periodic replacement of filters, occasional mesh fabric repairs and periodic tightening of support cables. The development team at Vittori’s architectural firm, Architecture and Vision, estimate that a tower’s shelf-life in this African setting will reach 10 years.

According to Australian water conservancy organization the Water Group, Ethiopians spend 40 billion hours a year trying to find and collect water. Once found, the water is often unsafe, as ponds and lakes are often teeming with infectious bacteria or contaminated with animal waste. But don’t be seduced into thinking this is just an African problem.

Water scarcity is one of today’s most urgent world problems. In the past hundred years, our water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase.  Earth holds enough freshwater for seven billion people but distribution is uneven and much is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed.

A United Nations Water Human Development Report published in 2006 stated water scarcity affects every continent.  Consider that around 1.2 billion people (one fifth of the world population) live in areas of water scarcity. Another 1.6 billion people live in countries that lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers.

Build new wells, you say? Vittori told Smithsonian, “[In Ethiopia], public infrastructures do not exist and building a well is not easy. To find water, you need to drill in the ground very deep, often as much as 1,600 feet. So it’s technically difficult and expensive. Moreover, pumps need electricity to run as well as access to spare parts for when the pump breaks down.”

Toilets for People founder, Jason Kasshe, wrote in a New York Times editorial, “If the many failed development projects of the past 60 years have taught us anything, it’s that complicated, imported solutions do not work.”

Green Prophet has broadcast innovative water-production kit such as Eole’s double-duty turbines that wick water from wind, and South American billboards that siphon water from the atmosphere. Other low-tech water purification inventions like the Life Straw need a traditional water source.

The Warka water towers may lessen the devastating impacts of water scarcity in specific locations, but we need to act now – everyone, everywhere – to smarten up about conservation and peaceful cooperation about this most essential planetary resource. This goes beyond peeing your shower, or dropping a brick in your toilet.

Water is more than a building block of life, it can a be a powerful tool for peace between nations. Mumbai-based think tank Strategic Foresight Group (SFG), asserts that trans-boundary water cooperation directly correlates with regional stability and peace. The inverse also holds true: failure to collaborate when managing shared water resources raises the risk of war.  Efforts like these water-producing towers are a small step in the right direction.

Nine towers have been built so far; a prototype installed in Bomarzo, Italy allows for testing and design changes. The team is working on version 3.1 (see lead image) while searching for investment partners to allow project scale-up.

The first Ethiopian pilot is scheduled for early 2015.

Update May 1, 2019:

The Warka Tower, Ethiopia, has been selected as one of the 20 shortlisted projects for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Kazan, Russian Federation, 25 April 2019 – The 20 shortlisted projects for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture were announced in Kazan at an exhibition on the Aga Khan Award for Architecture that was inaugurated by His Excellency Rustam Minnikhanov, President of the Republic of Tatarstan.

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Glow-in-the-dark roads recently debuted on a 500 meter stretch of Netherlands highway!  Brought to you by the guy behind glow-in-the-dark trees.  He’s been burning the candle at both ends – not so much to increase light levels, more to roll out new applications of his natural luminescence designs.

Standard street lighting has been replaced by light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings in this pilot project, first proposed by Studio Roosegaarde in 2012, now installed after an arduous government approval process.

All reports indicate that the road safety project is more like a stunning art installation. A local news report said, “It looks like you are driving through a fairy tale.”

Daan Roosegaarde, studio founder and lead designer, told ARStechnica, “I was sitting in my car amazed by these roads we spend millions on – but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave. I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us.”

He imagined road lighting provided by naturally glowing plant life or bio-engineered surface coatings. He thought about markings integral to road surfaces that would be triggered by temperature change to broadcast weather news to travelers (see image above).

This project is limited to glow-in-the-dark road markings on the N329 highway in Oss, and was developed in cooperation with road construction company Heijmans by combining photo-luminescent powder into road paint.  

There is tremendous potential for products like these given stressed government budgets, ratcheting transportation operation and maintenance costs and ever-increasing demand for electricity. Heijmans plans to expand the project after monitoring performance of this first installation, but some challenges are expected. The paint emits light for up to eight hours but light quality is diminished by uneven application or rough surfaces.  Eight hours is also insufficient in longer hours of northern winter darkness.

Studio Roosegaarde is a social design lab where artist Daan Roosegaarde with his team of designers and engineers create interactive designs that explore the dynamics between people, technology and space. They aim to bring technology and design to the real world, with practical and beautiful results.

Roosegaarde makes an open plea to governments around the globe to facilitate labs like his, “We should create labs in the city where we can experiment and explore these kinds of solutions. Like a free zone. We want to do it safely, but just give us a park and we’ll prove it to you. Be more open.”

Direct application of glowing pavement markings are impractical throughout much of the Middle East, where roads are not naturally cleansed of dust and oil by frequent precipitation. Here in Amman, light-reflective road markings are rendered ineffective soon after installation as vehicles grind dirt and debris into the sun-softened thermoplastic paint – preventing the light-reflecting components of the coating from performing their intended function. Bit this extraordinary pilot is a promising first step towards embedding renewable technologies into transportation.

Images from Studio Roosegaarde

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He told Dezeen, “I mean, come on, it will be incredibly fascinating to have these energy-neutral but at the same time incredibly poetic landscapes.”

“In the last year I really became fond of biomimicry,” he said. Biomimicry is the imitation of natural systems to solve complex design issues. Consider Velcro, which was inspired when an engineer was removing burrs from his dog’s fur; and Olympic swimsuits that replicate the water-slicing qualities of shark skin; and new adhesives patterned after the clinging ability of gecko feet.

Roosegaarde was specifically fascinated by how animals like fireflies and deep sea creatures generate light.

“When a jellyfish is deep underwater it creates its own light,” he said, “It does not have a battery or a solar panel or an energy bill. It does it completely autonomously. What can we learn from that?” (Jellyfish use a biological compound called luciferin to emit light.)

His research led him to the State University of New York  and Alexander Krichevsky, whose technology firm Bioglow auctioned off genetically modified glow-in-the-dark plants earlier this year.

Bioglow splices DNA from luminescent marine bacteria to the chloroplast genome of a common houseplant, so the stem and leaves emit a faint light similar to that produced by jellyfish.

They’ve teamed up with a goal to create glow-in-the-dark trees. Actually more like twinkling topiary – the final product will be created from a collection of luminescent plants grouped into a tree-like shape.

Conceptually cool, but who’s looking at health and safety?

The European Union strictly regulates the use of genetically modified (GM) plants, and Roosegaarde is prohibited from using this material in his Netherlands studio; he had to travel to the US to receive his Bioglow plant.

American policy on GM substances are more lax, but building codes are not. Planning permission typically requires an environmental assessment for projects that have a public impact.  Shouldn’t the same be required when proposing to turn the trees into street lighting?

Roosegaarde is also working solo on another project called Glowing Nature which does not use GM material, but instead cultivates trees with light-emitting properties similar to those in bioluminescent mushrooms.

He proposes to apply a micro-thin coat of “biological paint” to allow trees to glow in the dark. The solar coating recharges during sunlight hours and can glow for up to eight hours at night. Material trials start later this year.

Sort of head-shaking, that one.

Phosphorescent paints have been around for ages, commercially available, and commonly used to mark emergency escape paths or paint constellations on your bedroom ceiling. They are so popular that WikiHow even offers a tutorial on how to make your own at home (link here).

So what’s Glowing Nature bringing to the table?

These flash-in-the-dark concepts need robust environmental vetting before they can be taken seriously.

The post Safely swap your streetlight for a glowing tree? appeared first on Green Prophet.

While we contemplate whether GMO engineers can free our world from its glaring lack of light emitting houseplants and radiant pigs, we overlook far more amazing secrets of nature which make our best bio-science minds look like rank amateurs. The humble rhubarb plant is one such example.

Harvard scientists recently discovered a secret lurking beneath the oversize leaves of this bittersweet plant. This secret may lead to more widespread and efficient use of solar energy.

Bionic Rhubarb

The Six-Million Dollar man, the Bionic Woman and Robocop redefined the word bionic to mean a biological/robotics crossbreed. But long before the advent of bad 1970s television shows and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the word bionic referred to a technique of learning from nature.

Bionics meant the study of nature and the application of what we learn to meet our needs. So, for example, people studied the nanoscale engineering which gives lotus leaves their self-cleaning properties. From this they developed replicas of this design. Velcro is another example. Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed how tenaciously the seeds of wild burdock stuck to his clothes and his dog’s fur. He studied the burrs and applied their shape to his invention. So what can we learn from rhubarb?

Amazing Rhubarb
Rhubarb is an amazing plant. Some varieties such as the desert rhubarb (Rheum palaestinum) are able to irrigate themselves.

Their enormous 1/3 square meter leaves collecting more than four liters of water each year, sixteen times what similar-sized plants can collect in their Negev desert environment where as little as 75mm of rain falls each year. These amazing plants literally water themselves!!!

Other rhubarb varieties such as Rheum rhabarbarum, are able to survive long cold dark winters in northern climates. They begin producing sugar in early spring thanks to the photosynthesis generated in its enormous dark-green leaves. The thick pinkish-red stems of this large-leafed plant are used in European and American cakes and pies.

You won’t find corned-beef and cabbage served in authentic Irish homes during Saint Patrick’s day holiday but the powerful smell of rhubarb and mackerel is likely to waft from many Irish kitchens before, during and after this upcoming holiday.

Rhubarb’s Energy Secret
But now scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have extended the use of rhubarb beyond cakes and pies and smelly fish meals. They discovered ways in which rhubarb an used in solar energy generation.

Just imagine giant rhubarb leaves adorning our electric cars and solar homes. Imagine that at night they are illuminated by the glare of genetically modified flying pigs!

Actually, that isn’t how rhubarb can be used. The Harvard team including Michael J. Aziz, Tracy Sykes, Roy G. Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot and Alán Aspuru-Guzik was searching for better and cheaper chemicals to use in flow batteries.

What is a Flow battery?
The batteries used in portable electronics and cars typically use a liquid or semi-liquid (so-called “dry” cell) electrolyte separating two dissimilar metal electrodes. The electrochemical reaction between the metals can cause an ion flow within the electrolyte which is balanced by an electrical current flow outside of the battery.

Typically the electrolyte isn’t used up as the battery discharges but one or both of the electrodes are chemically changed until the battery no longer works. If you want a high capacity solid electrode battery, say for a photovoltaic utility, your only choice is to make it big and when it’s dead you have to figure out how to dispose of the thousands of tons of corroded electrode.

Flow battery capacity is limited only by the size of the tank holding the flowing electrode liquid. Flow batteries seem the perfect fit for the utility-sized batteries necessary to make photovoltaic solar energy a 24/7 energy choice. The problem is that the best existing flow batteries used vanadium, an exotic metal which costs almost $3000/kg.

The flow battery chemical the Harvard team discovered is an organic (carbon-containing) molecule known as a quinone which is very similar to the quinones found in rhubarb which by comparison to vandium, can be grown or purchased for well under $3000/kg.

It might not be as exciting as illuminated flying pigs but as someone much wiser than me once said, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.

Photo of Iranian man with Rhubarb by Masoud Soleymani Sepehr via Wikipedia

The post The best reason for growing rhubarb that we’ve ever heard appeared first on Green Prophet.

And Tangram is leading the way with a design that incorporates ancient Islamic climate controls and biomimicry to keep 80,000 people cool during what will be the Middle East’s first World Cup event.

“We are in a pivotal time now in Qatar as we have nine years left to deliver our construction plans,” Eckersall said at the recent event.

“We must be clever and intelligent to provide sustainable buildings for the next generation and think about the legacy we are going to leave for 2022 and beyond.”

Wrapped in a punctured skin that permits constant air flow, Tangram’s stadium relies on several passive cooling mechanisms that don’t require a watt of conventional energy.

Traditional baghdeer openings combined with Fibonacci logarithms and a cooling technique modeled after desert lizards (which fan themselves using their scales) pushes hot air out of the stadium while keeping cool air inside.

Additionally, using the Venturi effect, the designers propose to hasten air pressure across the colonnades to further promote cooling. These also provide thermal massing.

Lastly, a system of qanats, such as those used by the ancient Persians to transport water from the mountains to dry valleys below, are used to create a shallow pool of water below the stadium in order to provide evaporative cooling.

In this way, Tangram believes they will be able to keep interior temperatures below the so-called Wet Bulb Temperature (WBT) of 26-29C mandated by FIFA.

However, it remains to be seen whether the event will be staged during summer as critics warn that the high heat and humidity could imperil the health of both athletes and spectators.

Michel D’Hooghe, FIFA’s medical chief, has publicly announced his preference for a safer winter World Cup that year.

Meanwhile, with construction and talks about unfair labor laws well underway, Qatar is on track to spend approximately $115 billion to prepare for the event.

:: Inhabitat

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But the great thing about this competition is that learning is an essential aspect of the entire process. Hit the jump to find out what it takes to win $5,000 while providing meaningful ideas to address the very serious problem of worldwide water shortages.

The Biomimicry Student Design competition is the only one of its kind in the world and this year they are really hoping to see more teams from the Middle East sign up.

This year’s competition is comprised of two rounds. In the initial round, university teams will address a challenge related to water access and management using biomimetic design. If these words don’t mean a lot to you, don’t fret, since video tutorials and access to professional biomimics will available to students after they register for the competition.

“The challenge you address could be related to supply, acquisition, quality, treatment, sanitation, stormwater management, drought conditions, or seasonal variation in availability,” according to the organizers.

Once this round is complete, three winners will be announced, and they will receive generous cash prizes. But then there will be an optional opportunity to take these designs to the next level, to turn concepts into reality. The winner of that round will receive $5,000.

There are two approaches to this year’s competition: teams of at least two or more students might choose to address a local issue, like efficient irrigation in delta, or how to clean up Egypt’s filthy canals.

In this case, perhaps it would be useful to understand how wetland plants filter contaminants and create a design based on those biological mechanisms.

A global issue might include learning how to capture water from the air using processes employed by insects or trees, for instance.

But the important thing is for students to learn how to adjust their inner telescope to zoom in on the tricks that already exist in nature to fix the mistakes we have made by alienating ourselves from the same.

This is a wonderful opportunity, not least for its access to groundbreaking learning materials, and it would be super to see kids from the Middle East getting involved.

Image credit: Camel drinking water in the desert, Shutterstock

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Fuel-guzzling, monochromatic sedans will be a thing of the past if Mohammad Ghezel can sell his latest concept. About the only aspect of the future we dare to think deeply about given climate change, population growth and shrinking natural resources, BioThink vehicles mimic the movement and structure of certain insects.

Looking ahead to over-populated mega-cities in a world of higher temperatures and mandatory carbon cuts, the Iranian designer conceived two different kinds of narrow, self-sufficient 2-seaters that use up less space than conventional vehicles and produce zero carbon emissions. 

Inspired by insects

Biothink Type A has rotary-crawling wheels, according to Ghezel, that are powered by a hybrid energy source comprised of solar energy and magnets.

This combined with an artificial intelligence system that tells the vehicle when to run has multiple benefits: no emissions are produced, traffic accidents are reduced because the vehicle has a “bio-sense” that warns it against collisions, and the vehicle will never run out of fuel.

Biothink Type B is almost identical, except instead of using crawling wheels typical of most insects, this vehicle will use gyroscopic wheels that rely on the same kind of energy. The semi-transparent capsule roof

The futuristic BioThink boasts other exciting (hi-tech) features as well, including direction-finding embedded magnets and a micro-fiber system the keeps filters clean. The bionic lights are also automatically adjusted depending on the available light scenario.

Combating pollution

In addition, Ghezel envisions a holographic crystal system that will give the BioThink access to music, movies, databases and other material. Lastly, the body of the vehicle reshapes itself depending on the speed and conditions through which it travels.

Although we doubt that this concept will push pass the drawing board, we are encouraged to know that Iranians are worrying about climate change and reducing pollution. (It would be hard not to given that Tehran is one of the world’s most polluted cities.)

Artists, architects and conservationists have been calling attention to the pollution problem in Iran for a long while, but this may be the first time a car designer has obliquely called attention to the urgency of curtailing carbon emissions.

We’d love to know your impressions of this design?

:: Car Buzz

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