Bio-inspired textile materials and flexible films for sustainable design of ephemeral systems

Nature has always been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the design of artefacts. Indeed, several scientific and technological progresses have been inspired by the observation of nature. Today, the extraordinary knowledge reached by biological sciences in combination with the tremendous advances gained in the fields of science and engineering offer a unique opportunity to explore and comprehend logic and principles beyond the natural design basis. Nature- inspired design, known as biomimetic, aims at design artefacts and devices with logic mutuated from living organisms. In this context we can observe an evolutionary scenario that leads to the creation of innovative materials with new biological qualities like complexity, multi-functionality, sensibility, capability of including information and self-maintaining. This kind of innovation has involved the field of thin material systems like fabrics, membranes and flexible films that are becoming more and more complex, multi-performance and similar to biological systems in accordance to the requests of de-materialization of sustainable design. Furthermore, inside biological metaphor, tensile structures can bee seen like organisms, that exchange matter and energy flows with environment sensing, selecting and modulating them with something of similar to the skin of biological organisms. New bio-inspired thin materials, dynamic and versatile, like sensitive and smart fabrics or high performance flexible films, can be the most appropriate solutions to re-design the skin of objects in this direction. The paper is aimed to show the new opportunities offered to architecture and design by encoding biological principles like self-organization, autonomy, redundancy, self-adaptation into material design concepts for new tensile structures. To goal this objective a multidisciplinary integration approach is necessary in order to favourite cross-fertilization processes between different disciplines like architecture, design, engineering and biology oriented to carry out innovative and sustainable artefacts further appropriated to “survive” in the techno-biological era.