In areas where shepherds are very present, large umbrella-shaped trees can be seen and can still be found. Do they exist in nature? Some species like the rain tree in Brazil are exactly like that. Others, however, even though they are the same plant species, assume different shapes. An example of this can be found in England, in West Sussex, known as the Queen Elizabeth I Oak, and we can easily frame it by searching online. We see the ancient umbrella-shaped oak tree next to its sisters, which have a different shape.

What changed its shape? Shepherds who use sheep and goats guided the shape of the trees to create a large, dense area to provide shade in the summer and to cover the shepherd and his entire flock from the rain in the winter. In Italian, these modified trees co-designed by the shepherds also have a name: merigge (from the Latin meridie, meaning spending the afternoon resting in an open and shady place).

This is an example of biomimetic design, with which I introduce the concept to my students at the IUAV University of Venice, perhaps the world's first university exclusively dedicated to architecture. Biomimetics is the applied science, art, and practice of designing that uses nature as a model, measure, and mentor. Leonardo Da Vinci can be considered the designer who introduced this concept to modernity. We study the materials, shapes, and systems that are part of living organisms and use this knowledge, derived from 3.5 million years of evolutionary history, as inspiration and design tools.

Considering that our system of inhabiting space and territory, and our model of producing goods and services, has created some of the most significant local and global problems, the idea of conceiving in a biomimetic way can be a solution for several reasons. First, because it fits into modes and patterns that are specific to ecosystems. Just as the shepherd does with the tree to "shape," guiding a living system towards possible evolution, it is a pattern of co-design carried out by nature and the shepherd.

Second, design solutions are applied that, being based on nature, increase the value of ecosystem services. That is, those two free activities that ecosystems perform for us as a social and economic system.

The third reason is that by acting on and guiding natural dynamics, we make better use of energy and use less of it. In a world where energy requires substantial expenses and creates harm (thermal pollution and increased greenhouse gases if fossil resources are used), we do not work by inserting objects and systems into nature, but we take the current environmental system and shape it, adding pieces so that it also becomes useful to us in products and services, among other things.

If in summer tourist cities we build wetlands with a water purification function, we create an ecosystem service, we recreate an ecosystem that was lost (the coasts of southern Europe have lost at least 80% of their wetlands in 100 years), removing some unpleasant characteristics, such as being a source of mosquitoes (and this is done considering certain design parameters, such as controlling the speed of water and managing its location both superficially and subsuperficially). This system works better in summer and when tourists arrive because wetland vegetation needs sun and heat.

The side effect of the presence of a swamp is the local control of temperature and humidity, that is, the increase in habitability during the summer in the city. And yes, biomimetic design can be a useful tool for politicians and planners, and scientists have a new task: finding models to copy.

* PhD in Environmental Sciences and external professor of Environmental Systems and Biomimetics at the IUAV University of Venice