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So, should we look to nature as inspiration for how we should build? Not quite.
There is a trend in engineering called "bio-mimickry". But this is a far cry from nature-conscious design. Bio-mimickry only considers one facet of something. An engineer notices that a grasshopper has a certain linkage in their leg, studies the benefits of this linkage, and applies it. Perhaps he studies why this linkage is beneficial to the grasshopper - muscles do not have an instantaneous response, say. But the engineer does not consider for what end the grasshopper exists. He is not interested in the grasshopper as such.
He is interested in extracting one aspect of the creature - he wants to appropriate a tiny slice of God's intelligence for his own ends. He takes a fundamentally colonizing attitude towards the creature. To such an engineer, it is of no real importance whether the grasshopper exists in the world - he is only interested in the inspiration it provides. It may as well be just another manmade contrivance, even though the engineer may engender some affection towards it.
So how do we take a nature-conscious approach to design?
Mere observation and study is not enough. Husbandry is required.
I started a small flock of sheep this year. I acquired six ewes and a ram. I've had them on pasture now for three months. Prior to this, for a few months I read many books, articles, listened to talks, and visited a few farms. Reading is one thing. Seeing is another.
But owning - husbanding - is a completely different level of knowledge.
This is made most obvious in that they reveal themselves to you differently when you are consistently with them. In the same way that it takes a while for a friend to reveal certain sides of themselves to you - it is so with sheep as well. Originally, they wanted nothing to do with me, and were hesitant to even take grain from my outstretched hand. Now, they run up to greet me, and are fairly calm if I pick them up and handle them. I can begin to see things that were not written - and which cannot be written of well.
Such a role as shepherd is less about producing sheep than it is guiding them. As Elizabeth Theokritoff puts it, "...we are not spiritual alchemists, charged with 'improving' the world so that it can serve as God's instrument; we are something closer to 'gardeners,' charged with 'working and keeping' a world which is already his instrument."
It seems that all too often we are keen to outdo God, to try and improve upon what has already been written. No, truly, our objective in whatever role we find ourselves in - farmer, rancher, craftsman, plumber, teacher, president, mother, father, mechanic, or engineer - is to bring out what has already been written, to make known what already is.