Tom McKeag

Tom McKeag teaches bio-inspired design at the California College of the Arts and University of California, Berkeley, is the founder and president of BioDreamMachine, helped establish the nation’s first public elementary school course in biomimicry, and works as a licensed landscape architect and community planner.

Tom McKeag teaches bio-inspired design to undergraduate design students at the California College of the Arts and to graduate architectural, science and engineering students at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founder and president of BioDreamMachine, a nonprofit educational institute that brings bio-inspired design and science education to K12 schools. In 2006, McKeag helped establish the nation’s first public elementary school course in biomimicry at the Dixie Elementary School in Marin County, Calif. In his spare time he works as a licensed landscape architect and community planner.

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Blog

Is it Worth Looking to Nature for Profit?
By Tom McKeag, March 03, 2010
Technological advancements based on nature seem to appear every week and it is a challenge to keep track of them all. It is also a challenge to analyze their worth. Two useful questions are: Is...
Putting a Value on Bees, Trees and the Rest of Nature
By Tom McKeag, February 17, 2010
From putting a value on the services provided by fresh water and bees to building a community based on the land's historical ecosystem, companies, governments and groups are bringing heightened...
How Our Bones Inspire Architecture, Chairs and Cars GreenBiz.com
By Tom McKeag, January 27, 2010
Material is expensive and so is the energy used to make it. You should put the material where it is needed and take it away from where it is doing no good. Living bone is actually doing this all...
The Year in Biomimicry: Fins For Humans, The Aquapenguin and Robots With Whiskers
By Tom McKeag, January 13, 2010
It's time to review last year's bio-inspired products and services and pick my favorites, and, since this is my “sandbox,” I have decided to shamelessly name my awards the Tommies. ...
Reducing a Brown Cloud to its Silver Lining: How Natural Limits Lead to Innovation
By Tom McKeag, December 08, 2009
While I do not think that we can design our way out of our current problems of climate change, innovation comes in many forms, including the political and cultural. Let's hope for good news from...
Why Flying Monkeys Don't Rule the World: Recognizing the Ecological Context of Design
By Tom McKeag, November 19, 2009
There is a resuscitated movement to judge our built work by the wider ecological context into which it is put. To optimize its beneficial effect rather than maximize its financial profit (or...
The Anthozoans Are Coming to Save Us! Corals Offer Concrete Solutions to Our Carbon Woes
By Tom McKeag, November 04, 2009
The method corals use for building their homes is worlds away from the way humans have been making cement and concrete, but one company has developed an innovative method for using seawater (which...
At the Bioneers Conference, Living Building Challenge is a Growing Idea
By Tom McKeag, October 22, 2009
The Living Building Challenge sets a much higher bar for green buildings than other rating systems, but also allows much more latitude for innovation. Buildings that are striving to meet it...
Nature's Inventions: San Diego Conference Showcases Biomimicry Products
By Tom McKeag, October 07, 2009
At the second annual Biomimicry Conference in San Diego, attendees learned about electronic displays that mimic butterflies to save energy, carpeting tiles inspired by forest floors in order to be...
What Ant Colonies Can Teach Businesses About Efficiency
By Tom McKeag, September 23, 2009
Bees, ants and wasps operate sophisticated and efficient communication networks, and some companies have learned from such natural communication methods to better route workers and materials to...

How Termites Inspired Mick Pearce's Green Buildings
By Tom McKeag, September 02, 2009
Architect Mick Peace has designed energy-efficient buildings in Zimbabwe and Australia that replicate some of the same climate control features as termite mounds. The passive cooling techniques...
Why You Should Have a Waterfall in Your Living Room
By Tom McKeag, August 26, 2009
Suppose you lived in a hot and muggy climate and wanted to build a new house that was comfortable and energy efficient. One solution to dehumidify it? A waterfall with a special ingredient. Read...
Nature's Solutions for Energy Shortages
By Tom McKeag, August 19, 2009
Energy efficiency in living things often means combining material and fuel recycling with hitching a free ride. Soaring birds, drifting larvae and even prairie dogs make use of dependable...
Energy: All About the Flow
By Tom McKeag, July 29, 2009
How to get, use, save or avoid the need for energy are compelling topics today, and there have been important strides made in emulating energy flows in the natural world. ...
Structure: That Old Shell Game
By Tom McKeag, July 22, 2009
One of the great opportunities of our time is to do more with less, and therefore to provide a better life for more people. We now have an informational advantage though increased computation and...
Structure: Lessons from an Egg
By Tom McKeag, July 08, 2009
The ostrich egg is a study in contradictions solved. It needs to move easily, and then stay put. It needs to resist breaking, and then break easily. It needs to seal some things out, but allow...
Framing Our Design Challenges: Introducing the Bio Design Cube
By Tom McKeag, June 17, 2009
If we're going to effectively look to nature as a “model, measure and mentor,” then we might want to have a framework for that search. This framework ought to be complete, useful, instructive and...
Beyond Metaphor: Biomimicry and the Case of the Gecko
By Tom McKeag, June 09, 2009
Designers of tomorrow's buildings have to go beyond metaphors in order to apply truly useful biomimetic innovation to the problems of our built world. For years researchers have been studying how...
Learning From Nature to Use Less Material and Energy
By Tom McKeag, June 03, 2009
Solutions in nature that require the least effort and least material are fertile grounds for builders' research. Least-material solutions often mean least-energy solutions, and these savings may...
It's the Structure, Stupid: Why Nature is a Better Builder
By Tom McKeag, May 27, 2009
Nature has been practicing feedback loops for billions of years, and builders are now implementing feedback loops (through advanced programming and sensors) in structures to optimize their...

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