Bionicum

The Bionicum is a museum about bionics in the Tiergarten Nürnberg. It sits in the upper floor of the listed natural history building at the zoo’s entrance. The project was funded by the Bavarian Environment Ministry and coordinated until 2023 by the Bavarian State Office for the Environment with partners including the TH Nürnberg and FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. The museum’s interactive exhibition opened in July 2014 and covers technical innovations inspired by nature. Visitors move through 400 square metres of original exhibits, hands-on experiments and background information. A ‘bionic tour’ links the displays to animal enclosures around the zoo, where further experiments can be tried. Since 2018 a bionic garden has shown living models such as burdock, horsetail and nasturtium. The centre also runs the first extracurricular bionics learning programme in Bavaria, offering guided tours, research sheets and teacher training. Each year a new special exhibition explores a different theme, from biodiversity to future technologies. Research at the Bionicum has focused on materials, mechatronics and optics, and now supports the BayBionik project network. An accompanying app invites users to travel to the year 2050 and discover how these technologies might be used in daily life.