Nature in Design - Present

For this topic, I have chosen to begin my research in the present time. The reason is the fact that the advances in our technology has now allowed us to mimic nature even in its most smallest things, like molecular composition or arrangement. I thought it would be great to look at the technology we have now and compare it later on with its more primitive designs to really see the difference that using nature in our designs can improve their effectiveness.


This concept of designing from nature is called "Biomimicry", we mimic what nature has already figured out. Lets not confuse this with Bio-assisted design as Janine Benyus talks about in her book "Biomimicry"(Jannine Benyus, 2003). "...learning about the natural world is something, learning from the natural world, that's the switch!" (Janine Benyus, TED Talk, 2007)
This research will, for now, be focused on how we can copy nature to make better designs for us, not using nature.

FIG 1: Biomimicry, Harper Collins, 2003

Going back to the book "Biomimicry", the first thing that shocks me is the amount of information we know about how nature has solved the problems that we encounter everyday. It becomes really apparent that today's dilemmas have simply occur because we have haven't been taking inspiration from what is in front of us, we haven't been looking in the right place.
The fact that this book is still being sold today through websites like Amazon and others, including a 2009 Kiindle Edition, the media exposure these concepts are getting through websites like TED, Youtube, Biomimicry 3.8, etc... Shows Biomimicry is still a relevant and popular topic in today's media.




Other books explore these concepts in different medias are:

FIG2: Biomimicry in Architecture. Michael Pawlyn, 2011.

FIG3: Biomimicry (Inventions inspired by Nature). Dora Lee, Margot Thompson, 2011

One of the most striking areas in which Janine's research provides insight to is self assembly. It begins in the smallest part of every organism; cells and their self reproduction. These microscopic cells recreate themselves over and over to create bigger structures with an amazingly efficient design. Millions of years of evolution to create species that are so well adapted in their environment they still survive even in the most extreme conditions. The question we can ask is, can we make things that self assemble?

Skilar Tibbits (a researcher in MIT), has created a "chain" that can be programmed so that, once shaken, will assemble into the structure that we have programmed it to do so. This means the only human input needed, is shacking, and thanks to technology these days, we can make a machine to shake it for us.

Here is an image of the chain:

FIG4: Skylar Tibbits, Self assembling chains, 2011.

To see the impact that nature in design has in nowadays media in books, we simply have to head to Amazon and find a wide array of books about this topic, like "Nature Design: from inspiration to innovation" ( Angeli Sachs,2007). "Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design " (Maggie McNab, Sep 2011), and on a more interesting note, we see how nature has affected design on books and the method of publication, specifically in digital downloads. The way humans have been treating the planet is far from what it should be treated as, and the low numbers of trees have made for a rise in recycling and  and alternative ways of publishing. This is where tablets like the Kindle and Ipads come into place, allowing for a digital download of an ever expanding library of books and magazines in order to create a more eco-friendly media out of books. "The roughly 168 kg of CO2 produced throughout the Kindle's lifecycle is a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle DX."(Emma Rich, 2009)

FIG5: Nature Design, 2007.

FIG6: Design by Nature, 2011.

FIG7: Kindle.

If we look at how we build things now, we find that it takes a vast amount of time and resources compared to what it takes for cells to reproduce. T build a skyscraper, we need years of time and thousands and thousands of parts, yet a DNA stray can replicate itself and divide millions of times in a question of nanoseconds. That is what we have to replicate, the immense efficiency of nature.

With a little insight into the future, if this technology evolved enough, we could be looking at self assembling buildings and machines, which would have a massive impact in our every day lives. But self assembly isn't enough to consider it a success by nature's standards. We see amazing things happen in nature, and probably the most important of them, is healing. If we could build things that can repair themselves, as long as they tailor to the specific objective their are made for, there is no more need for improvement until the environment changes, until the context of the design changes.

These theories, are being exposed not only through websites like TED, Youtube, Vimeo and journals like Gizmodo, but also through medias like design and architecture:

Could this some day build itself? Empire state Building.

FIG8: "MacroBot". Skylar Tibbits, CBA MIT, 2009

Another absolutely fantastic development of nature mimicking technology is the transformation of CO2 into usable, biodegradable plastics: Polymers.
"...plants to not see CO2 as the biggest poison of our time, WE see it that way" (Cornell University Chemistry and Chemical Biology. (2011). Geoff Coates.)


Geoff Coates saw that plant use CO2  to make glucose and other vital things for them to survive, and tried to find out a way to create useful things for us humans from this, as thought of as today, poison.
The way him and his team have done it is by mimicking the photosynthesis process of plants, and extract polymers to make plastics. These are impact resistant, and can react with water to convert it into non toxic materials.
These plastics could also be turned into fuel, so again, the re-usability element of these materials is evident, once the fuel is combusted, it releases CO2.
Anothe designer who uses Polymer based materials is Ross Lovegrove, who has had great success in introducing these designs into the general market through architecture and product deign. A perfect example is the "LDN Biomega Bike" (Joe Mills, Dezeen, Ross Lovegrove, 2010).

FIG9: Ross Lovegrove's LDN bike for Biomega, made from biodegradable Polymer materials combined with Carbon Fibre.
20 Aug 2010.

An example of how architecture has borrowed from nature is the very famous Eden Project (Eden Trust, 2001).
"We turned to nature at every stage of the design process - from the stratigic stages of looking at clusters of bubbles, through to the detailed stages during which we studied dragon fly wings to help us resolve the way the steel members intersected at the junctions"(Exploration architecture)

Its Biomes were inspired by bubbles and cell structures. The fact that they still run exhibitions today proves the popularity of this design.

FIG 10 - 11: These are some of the events that run today in the eden project.

The most important and most efficient designs of our time are based on nature. I can't see how anyone could argue that. Even in the simplest of changes, nature can aid in such an immense way that it seems weird that we haven't thought of this as a solution for our problems before. These designs are more enviroment friendly, cheaper and much easier to maintain. This could mean that designs like these could pave the way for third world countries to develop. If these designs are cheaper and require hardly any manteinance, the costs of keeping the design alive for the following years are drastically reduced. This doesn't just apply to buildings, any design that borrows from nature is very, very cheap. If we could develop Mr. Coates CO2 fules propperly, it could mean that these countries could make efficient designs using hardly any resources...
The exposure of these theories through websites like TED and Youtube, books like "Biomimicry" and others, journals and the media of design itself, proves that they are popular in many of today's diferent media.




So how do today's fims portray Nature in Design, Where do we see designs based on nature come to life?

Another great example of Sci-fi's borrowing from nature is the tranformer "Ravage", based on a panther. This "updated" design  debuted in the 2009 release of the film "Transformers 2" (Paramount Pictures, IMDB, 2009):

FIG12: Ravage.

As you can see, Sci-fi's take on nature is deffinately very different to our own "real life" developments in design . Where as we use Nature in design as a way to improve efficiency and costs in design, Sci-fi's take on it, for me, represents the extreme future design. It creates the relationship that means that nature + future + design = Cool and interesting to see. It wants to strive towards the amazing. The exciting thing about this is that, for years, Sci-fi media has paved the way in what to strive for in the future of design. It started with computers and touchscreen devices, devices we can talk to like the new iphone 4S. Sci fi represents what we, as consumers, want to see in the future, and that is what makes it exciting.

One may think that we're still far away from seing robot cats that can jump around and do a wide array of acrobatics, but the truth is far from that, as demonstrated by the robot designed by Boston Dynamics: BIG DOG (Boston Dynamics, 2009).

Big dog is a military robot that can walk in any type of terrain (even ice) and keep its balance, even when pushed around and on steep slopes. The results are really astonishing:

"The ultimate goal for BigDog is to develop a robot that can go anywhere people and animals can go." (Boston Dynamics,2009)

Lets move away, for now, from the super advanced nature based designs that we see in Sci-fi media and lets go back a little. Searching through ebay collectibles I found a very interesting object that has nature as an inspirations for design. It is a WoodCut (ebay.co.uk) print made between 2000 - 2008 by Earl Nitschke. Here is a picture of it:

FIG13: Earl Nitschke's Wood Cutout.

It is interesting to see Nitschke's aproach to nature in design as an artform. He uses nature to create his design, to express and show other nature elements like flower shapes, flowing water and asymetry. This woodcut really is fantastic, and since it was being auctioned (auction ends 25/10/2011) in ebay, shows that these type of items still have great relevance in todays society.

If we continue to look at woodcut art, there really is a wide array of styles and some beautiful art indeed... Most of these have been made by unkown artists (VVG Teak sculpture, 2011):

FIG14: Taylor Made productions.

Fig15: Woodcarving Art.

Fig16: Vietnameese Wood Carving.

We've covered Nature in Design in a wide variety of media: We've looked at books, pure scientific research, Sci fi movies and comics. wood cut art, military implementation and robotics, architecture, although there is still another topic I want to research into: Toys

Nature inspires toy designs at a non stop rate, and we see countless expressions of this with stuffed animals. They've been there for generations and continue to be one of the most demanded toys. They usually take the shape of an animal and turn it into something cute or pleasing to see, regardless of the actual qualities of the animal... a stuffed bear is far less intimidating than a real bear, that's for sure! Doing a search on Amazon will show that this toy is still as popular as any other toy, if not the most popular kind... the countless pages that appear in the Amazon search are certainly proof of that.

FIG17: Teddy bear as found on Amazon.

Of course stuffed animals (Mellisa & Doug, 2011) are not always the outcome of natures inspiration in this media,  other, more contemporary and original toys are "flying wooden animals" (Inspiredbynature.com, 2011), these are being sold today and are quite popular as wel.

FIG18: Lady bird toy 2011.

Nature in design is very much at its peak nowadays. It's revolutionary concepts and extremely efficient designs are attracting a lot of attention and continue to evolve at a surprising rate. This is reflected in various types of media like Film, architecture, art and many others that we've talked about. It's an exciting world that is ever evolving and will hopefully keep growing and bringing its benefits to us.