jmc

The shaded region consists of 8 copies of the checkered region in the figure below. The area of this region is the difference between the area of a quarter-circle and the area of an isosceles right triangle. The area of the quarter-circle is $\frac{1}{4}\pi (4{)}^2=4\pi$ square units, and the area of the isosceles right triangle is $\frac{1}{2}(4)(4)=8$ square units. Therefore, the area of the checkered region is $4\pi -8$ square units, and the area of the shaded region is $8(4\pi -8)=\boxed{32\pi -64}$ square units.