Every challenge has a biological precedent. We help you find it.
Whatever you are looking to solve for, nature has a strategy. Consultation work is for individuals, teams, and organizations that want to bring nature-informed thinking to their challenge. From a product or material design problem to a systems or organizational question, we work together to reframe your challenge through a biological lens, identify the organisms and strategies most relevant to your conditions, and translate what nature has already perfected into something you can apply.
We work across two complementary disciplines: biomimicry, which abstracts and emulates nature's strategies in design, and nature-based solutions, which deploy nature itself to solve human challenges directly. Part of our work is understanding which fits your situation, or whether a combination of both is the right answer.
We provide a focused look at one organism whose strategy applies directly to your challenge. We explain what it does, why it works, and how it can be applied to your problem.
A full survey of nature's approaches to your challenge. Canvasing a range of organisms, honing in on champion species, and translating their strategies into clear abstracted principles and actionable solutions.
A focused consulting call where we dig into your specific problem together. The output is a problem statement reframed through a biological lens, and a clear direction for where to look next.
A symbiotic relationship where we work alongside you over time. Whether that is on-site or on-call to provide a nature-informed perspective.
Biomimicry is most powerful when it becomes a shared way of thinking — when it becomes a lens an entire team or community can look through. Workshops are designed to build that capacity: to introduce biomimicry, understand the philosophy, make it accessible, and give participants practical frameworks they can take back and use.
We offer half-day, full-day, and multi-session formats, adaptable to the group and context — whether that is a corporate team, a university class, a design studio, or a community organization.
An introduction to biomimicry principles and the step-by-step process, with real-world examples showing how each step works in practice.
Extended problem-framing, biological research, and concept translation. We can work through a real challenge your team or organization is facing, from first principles to nature-informed solutions.
Sustained biomimicry integration for teams or educational programs, building the capacity to apply the process independently over time.
Tailored sessions for schools, universities, accelerators, and conferences.
A small sampling of projects, each applying the full biomimicry process to a real-world challenge.
Synthetic clothing is one of the primary sources of microplastic pollution, shedding fibers with every wash cycle that pass straight through conventional filters. Manta rays solve an analogous problem elegantly: their cephalic fins use a ricochet filtration mechanism that separates particles from water without clogging. This project translated that mechanism into a filtration system for pipes, designed to capture microplastics at source before they enter waterways.
ABS plastic degrades under thermal load. A significant problem for outdoor applications where heat accelerates degradation and raises safety concerns. The morpho butterfly and the panther chameleon both manage color and heat through structural means. The morpho through nanoscale iridescent structures that reflect rather than absorb light, and the chameleon through iridophore crystal layers that actively reflect infrared radiation. This project explored how nanolithography could replicate the morpho's nanostructure on the surface of ABS, while a secondary layer of iridophore-inspired crystals mixed into the plastic itself provides redundancy and resilience - ensuring infrared reflection even as the surface weathers over time. Together, the two strategies could reduce infrared thermal load by up to 50%, keeping surfaces cooler, safer, and significantly longer-lasting.
Social media recommendation algorithms optimize for engagement, which in practice means reinforcing existing preferences and accelerating the formation of echo chambers. Nature does the opposite: ecosystems maintain health through diversity, balance, and feedback loops that prevent any single element from dominating. This project explored which organisms and natural processes — from light gaps in forests to the immune system in bats — could inform the design of content algorithms that actively support diverse viewpoints and reduce the polarizing effects of conventional recommendation systems.
Mosquitoes are responsible for up to one million deaths annually, yet the synthetic compounds used to deter them - DEET chief among them, carry their own risks to human health and the environment. This project asked a different question: how does nature already solve for chemical deterrence, and what can those strategies teach us about designing something safer? One of the champion organisms that emerged was the humble chicken. The volatile compounds emitted by chickens actively repel the malaria-carrying mosquito Anopheles arabiensis by disrupting its ability to identify a suitable host through competitive binding of odorant-specific proteins. The strategy points toward a class of nature-derived repellents that leave no toxic residue and pose no risk to non-target organisms.
Every challenge is different. Get in touch and we'll find the right way to work together.