By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will likely live in cities. Human settlements depend on resources, benefits, and services from ecosystems, but they also tend to deplete ecosystem health. To address this situation, a new urban design and planning approach is emerging. Based on regenerative design, ecosystem-level biomimicry, and ecosystem services theories, it proposes designing projects that reconnect urban space to natural ecosystems and regenerate whole socio-ecosystems, contributing to ecosystem health and ecosystem services production. In this paper, we review ecosystems as models for urban design and review recent research on ecosystem services production. We also examine two illustrative case studies using this approach: Lavasa Hill in India and Lloyd Crossing in the U.S.A. With increasing conceptualisation and application, we argue that the approach contributes positive impacts to socio-ecosystems and enables scale jumping of regenerative practices at the urban scale. However, ecosystem-level biomimicry practices in urban design to create regenerative impact still lack crucial integrated knowledge on ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services productions, making it less effective than potentially it could be. We identify crucial gaps in knowledge where further research is needed and pose further relevant research questions to make ecosystem-level biomimicry approaches aiming for regenerative impact more effective.

Application of biomimetics has expanded progressively to other fields in recent years, including urban and architectural design, scaling up from materials to a larger scale. Besides its contribution to design and functionality through a long evolutionary process, the philosophy of biomimetics contributes to a sustainable society at the conceptual level. The aim of this review is to shed light on trends in the application of biomimetics to architectural and urban design, in order to identify potential issues and successes resulting from implementation. In the application of biomimetics to architectural design, parts of individual “organisms”, including their form and surface structure, are frequently mimicked, whereas in urban design, on a larger scale, biomimetics is applied to mimic whole ecosystems. The overall trends of the reviewed research indicate future research necessity in the field of on biomimetic application in architectural and urban design, including Biophilia and Material. As for the scale of the applications, the urban-scale research is limited and it is a promising research which can facilitate the social implementation of biomimetics. As for facilitating methods of applications, it is instrumental to utilize different types of knowledge, such as traditional knowledge, and providing scientific clarification of functions and systems based on reviews. Thus, interdisciplinary research is required additionally to reach such goals.

Biomimicry is a design framework with growing interests in sustainable architectural and urban design practice. Nevertheless, there is a significant lack of studies and knowledge regarding its practical application. In 2020, a French workgroup called Biomim’City Lab published a document identifying and describing 16 urban projects designed by French teams integrating biomimicry at various levels. Our research is an opportunistic study analyzing this data, aiming to identify trends and challenges in the French market. We analyzed the projects using a mixed-method approach, through quantitative typological analysis and qualitative narrative analysis. This sample of French projects indicates a trend of increasing interest in biomimicry on built space projects in France. Biomimicry was primarily applied at the façade/roof/soil systems, mostly using macroscopic models as ecosystems, plants, and animals. Designers declared to aim diverse objectives with the biomimetic approach; still, thermal comfort is the most recurrent in the sample. We also identified that challenges remain to foster the field application, as the lack of awareness of the urban fabric stakeholders on the topic and the gaps between research and design practice.

Biomimicry is a growing field of developing environmental innovations for materials, facade systems, buildings, and urban planning. In France, we observe an extensive diversity of initiatives in biomimicry for the development of regenerative cities. These initiatives blossom in a large range of areas, from education to urban policies, to achieve a major environmental, social and economic paradigm shift. To provide a comprehensive understanding of this development at the national scale, this paper presents and discusses the diversity of the developed initiatives over the last 10 years in six main fields-education, urban policies, fundamental and applied research, design demonstrators, arts, and communication. This research is an opportunistic study based on the analysis of these initiatives enriched by the feedback of the stakeholders collected by the authors working in the field of biomimicry over the last seven years. We identify that biomimicry in France has mainly extended through individual initiatives of teachers, territorial authorities, architectural studios, or researchers rather than through the support of public policies. Putting into perspective developments in biomimicry by other countries, this cross-discipline analysis provides recommendations for the extensive development of regenerative architecture and urbanism at the national scale.

L’urbanisme organise et transforme l’espace par la pratique du projet, qu’ordonnent des choix d’aménagement sur un territoire. Plusieurs initiatives de recherche et de pratique de l’urbanisme projet visent à explorer l’intégration du fonctionnement des écosystèmes naturels dès la conception des projets. Cependant les processus d’urbanisation restent une cause centrale de la dégradation des écosystèmes. Le « regenerative design » propose une meilleure compréhension du site pour, associé à un processus participatif et en amélioration continue, aboutir à des projets avec des impacts positifs mutuels à la société et aux écosystèmes, permettant leur coévolution. Au travers de différents outils jusque-là publiés, la mise en pratique du regenerative design montre des résultats préliminaires à l’international, mais sa prise en compte en France reste superficielle. Dans cette recherche, nous explorons l’origine et la pratique contemporaine du regenerative design, nous mettons en parallèle cette théorie avec d’autres courants de l’urbanisme durable et écologique, et finalement nous identifions les cinq principes théoriques d’un projet urbain régénératif, afin de proposer une définition à ce terme.