Check out this entertaining show on the Bullitt Center from the Xploration Network’s Nature Knows Best. The episode, called Bio-Based Building, focuses on biophilic design and products.

“It’s not just about the materials we use,” says host Danni Washington. “It’s about the way we’re constructing them — creating buildings that are just as alive as the organisms that influence them.”

Among the featured companies are Sto Corp., an Atlanta coatings and paint manufacturer that developed a self-cleaning exterior paint based on the water-shedding properties of the lotus.

“The Lotus leaf itself has a unique microstructure. Basically it consists of a series of wax pillars that stand about 100 microns apart and the surface tension of the water is so high that it can’t get into the surface past these little pillars,” Sto Corp. Senior Development Chemist Chris Smith explains. “We figured that if we could mimic the lotus effect, we would then be able to have a coating that would keep itself clean. Through the combination of different raw materials we were able to synthetically mimic this structure found in nature.”