BIOMIMICRY

The book explores the connection between Leonardo da Vinci's visionary designs, Renaissance engineering, and modern biomimicry, highlighting how nature has inspired technological innovation across centuries.

The aim of BIOMIMICRY is to encourage reflection on the reader's relationship with nature, viewing it not as a resource to be exploited, but as a source of technical solutions to be understood and respected. This catalogue explores the concept of biomimicry by establishing a dialogue between the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Renaissance engineers on the one hand, and contemporary researchers on the other. It demonstrates how the living world can inspire our technological future, and how the Renaissance, with its innovative vision and deep connection to nature, understood this.

This book brings together original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, along with models of machines based on the artist's drawings such as an ornithopter, a mechanical dragonfly, a flying sphere, a bat's wing, and an aerial screw. It also features Renaissance manuscripts and biomimetic robots from LAAS-CNRS, the Santa Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, and the University of Lausanne. In this way, it highlights the extraordinary modernity of Leonardo da Vinci's work on materials, animal anatomy, bird and fish behaviour, and locomotion techniques. BIOMIMICRY brings together history, art, technology, and current scientific developments in a cross-disciplinary approach.