Level 1 of 5
Function
What the mechanism does. The largest area from the smallest protected stow, measured from the wing at rest and in flight.
A surface that collects only when it is useful, and is safe when it is not.
Mattara Energy + Motion
A design studio for energy and motion
We practise bionic design. We study how living things fold, open and gather energy, and we design products, places and systems that work the same way.
+0%surface area
WS1 Australian plague locust, Chortoicetes terminifera
The hindwing is pleated like a fan and stowed beneath a narrow, leathery forewing. It opens from one hinge to almost ten times its folded footprint.
404 mm² · 1.00× the folded wing
The studio
What Mattara does
We design the surfaces that gather energy and the mechanisms that open and stow them, for products, vehicles and places. We learn each mechanism from a living thing, and carry it into the design.
Energy
Products, places and systems that gather the energy they use from their surroundings: sun first, then wind and heat.
Motion
Things that move and change shape. Surfaces that open to collect, close to travel, and track the sun in between.
Bionic design
We learn the mechanism from a living thing at five levels, function, form, behaviour, system and meaning, and carry all five into the design.
The premise
Solar cells are now efficient and affordable enough to power things that move, provided those things can carry enough surface to the sun, and they are still improving. Yet we fit them as flat rectangles: bolted to roofs, ranked across paddocks, the simplest shape we could make, and it shows in our streets and landscapes. What products lack is surface shaped to belong, and the means to open it when it is useful and stow it when it is not. Insects solved that problem 300 million years ago.
Five levels at which a living thing can teach a designer
Level 2 of 5
Form
The shapes the function takes. A pointed forewing over a broad hindwing; veins that stiffen a membrane a fraction of a millimetre thick; a wing convex when closed that flattens as it opens.
Ribs that carry load in plain sight. Two finished forms, closed and open.
Level 3 of 5
Behaviour
How the living system acts over time. A dragonfly perches with its wings spread to warm, turns toward or away from the sun, and folds before weather.
Surfaces that track the sun, close for storms and learn the routines of the people who use them.
Level 4 of 5
System
How it relates to its surroundings. A termite’s nuptial flight releases thousands of identical individuals that each deploy alone. A wing is plumbed into the body that carries it.
Products made to be stacked and released in numbers; vehicles and places that share energy; wings that carry coolant and sensing as well as cells.
Level 5 of 5
Meaning
What the form says to people. The resting insect reads as calm; the open one as alive.
The wonder of a thing that unfolds like a living thing, and the pride of owning it. This is the level bionics has left out.
Every mechanism serves a purpose
Name it in a word or two. Then find the place where people need the same thing.
The atlas
Eight ways to fold a wing
Fifty-eight Australian insects from thirteen orders, measured from the natural-size plates of Tillyard’s 1926 textbook. The figure is the wing area a design gains over its stowed plan. Each wing below is cut from its traced plate and moves about its measured hinge.
WS110.6×
Fan pleat under a cover
A narrow, hardened forewing lies over a broad hindwing that closes along radial pleats like a hand fan.
Grasshoppers, stick insects, mantids, stoneflies.
Australian plague locust, from the 2003 plate.
WS22.0×
Flat stack
No fold at all. The wings lie flat, one over the other, and swing out from a single root.
Termites, sawflies, bees and wasps.
Termite alate, from the 2003 plate.
WS38.4×
Tented roof
Framed wings rest roof-wise over the body and form its outer envelope. They do not fold; they rotate out to fly.
Cicadas, lacewings, caddisflies.
Eastern bent-wing cicada, from the 2003 plate.
WS41.5×
Fixed span
The wings never fold. The baseline every folding type has to beat, and the most precisely controlled wing there is.
Flies and dragonflies.
Venation of the Australian emperor, beating in counterstroke.
WS55.0×
Shell over origami
Hard wing cases lift, then a hindwing folded across its length springs open at its crease.
Beetles and ladybirds.
Rhinoceros beetle, from the 2003 plate.
WS68.6×
Vertical clap
The wings close upright over the back, the smallest stowed footprint of all.
Butterflies and damselflies.
Ulysses butterfly, traced from Tillyard.
WS72.2×
Lengthwise pleat
Each forewing folds once along its length. A click at the base gives it two stable positions.
Paper wasps and potter wasps.
Paper wasp, traced from Tillyard.
WS810×
Earwig fan
A fan that spreads while its cross-creases snap flat. Bistable: it holds open and shut with no muscle at all.
Earwigs.
European earwig, Insects 360 scan; fan from published ratios.
1 of 8
Six values
How we design, and why
Living systems in transport
A vehicle can behave like an organism: it takes in sunlight, manages its heat by circulating fluid, rests compact and opens when conditions suit it.
Bionic design for self-energising mobility
Mobility that gathers the energy it uses. Australia has watched solar cars cross from Darwin to Adelaide since 1987; the task is to take that from the race to the everyday.
Products that thrive in their surroundings
A product designed this way reads its environment and responds: it opens to the sun, closes against hail and wind, and shelters what it carries from the heat.
Designing with nature, not against it
Work with sun, wind, heat and landscape rather than overpowering them. Ian McHarg’s phrase; Glenn Murcutt’s “touch the earth lightly”.
Ecosystem design for ways of living
In an ecosystem one organism’s waste is another’s food. Things designed this way share energy with each other and with the places they stop.
Beautiful things, because we should
Beauty is not a finish applied at the end. It is a reason to make things well, and a reason people keep what they own. An insect wing is both useful and beautiful.
Questions people ask us
Is Mattara a car company?
Mattara is a design studio built on a theory. The work began with transport, because the car is where desire has moved a whole industry, and that is still where it starts. But the theory applies wherever a product, a place or a system needs to gather energy and change shape: from a bicycle to a building to something in orbit.
Why insects?
Because they have already solved the problem. Insect wings fold, pleat, stack, tent and tuck beneath armoured covers, in bodies a few centimetres long, and they have done it reliably for 300 million years. No other group of living things offers as many ways to change surface area on demand.
Isn’t this just biomimicry?
Biomimicry transfers what a living thing does. Mattara also transfers how it looks, how it behaves, the system it belongs to, and what it means to the people who see it. Those five levels are the theory. Three guards keep it honest: learn the mechanism, not the shape; check the biology; state the energy in numbers.
Do cicadas fold their wings?
No, and we say so plainly. A cicada holds its wings roof-wise over its body and overlaps them. In our atlas it is a tented surface that rotates open, not a fold. Being exact about the insect is part of the method.
What happens next?
Development is underway. The three most promising wing types, a tented surface on a turning hub, the earwig fan and the shell over a fold, are being taken through engineering, with announcements to come in 2027.
Can I see the designs?
Not yet. The design studies drawn from the theory are being developed privately and will be shown when they are ready. If you are a researcher, engineer, manufacturer or investor who would like to talk, write to us.
A sneak peek
Where is this going?
We are building something that gathers its own energy and folds it away when it moves. Stay tuned for 2027.
Open by design
Published under Creative Commons
In 2027 we will publish the work behind Mattara under a Creative Commons licence: the theory, the fold atlas and the measurements beneath it, and our design studies and films, free for anyone to read, use and build on.
Ideas like these travel further when they are shared. We are looking for partners in engineering, manufacturing, research and design to carry them from the specimen plate into the world.