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 to reflect on their relationship with nature, and to see 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 shows the way in which the living can be a source of inspiration for our technological future, and the extent to which 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, models of machines based on the artist's drawings - an ornithopter, a mechanical dragonfly, a flying sphere, a bat's wing, an aerial screw - Renaissance manuscripts, biomimetic robots from LAASCNRS, 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. It brings together history, art, technology and current scientific developments in a cross-disciplinary approach.