Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when trying to find responsible, ecological solutions: If we’re trying to do it, chances are, nature already did it better.

Design teams were asked to come up with nature-inspired proposals for greener, more efficient living and working environments. The article Biomimicry Challenge: TOA Uses Fungi to Reimagine Sustainable Neighborhoods by Alissa Walker begins:

Our biomimicry challenge What Would You Ask Nature? drew dozens of real-world business problems submitted by companies from all over the world. We assigned three challenges to three firms and paired them each with a biologist. For the next three weeks, each team will be reporting their bio-inspired solutions.

The interesting part, from MycoRant’s perspective, comes a little later in the article. A team in Mexico City got a lot of inspiration for their idea from mycelium:

The solutions that proved most insightful came from mycelium or fungi, as well as their more common relatives, mushrooms. Mycelium present in forest and grasslands create a complex network of relations between organisms while maintaining very specific boundaries, just like an ecodistrict. Rovalo pointed out the “fairy ring” that occurs in nature, those rings or arcs of mushrooms that you sometimes see around trees or in fields of grass, where the richest nutrients are found in the center of the circle. The flow of energy, materials, nutrients, and information beneath are all very complex, and the mycelium forms intimate symbiotic relations with all of them–just like the interconnected systems of water, transit, energy, food that crisscross a neighborhood.

There’s more. If you think this kind of thinking has the potential to lead to sustainable solutions to urban problems, give it a read. Maybe you’ll be inspired to come up with your own brand of biomimicry.