Credit: John Hersey

Protecting the built environment from the forces of the natural world with dams and seawalls is important work (see "Saving Holland"), as is protecting the natural environment from the engineered world. But the 21st-century engineer should also look to the natural world as a powerful design partner and a source of sustainable solutions. A good place to begin is by studying the way natural materials are constructed at the nano­scale and drawing inspiration from them as we engineer our own materials. Take, for example, the civil engineer's construction material of choice: concrete, the oldest engineered building material and one of the most widely consumed materials on earth, second only to water.

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