And Nature, a Complex Relationship (original) (raw)
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Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019
This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlighting underlying tensions and problematic conceptions about nature in the Modern West. This history differs from broader theories of sustainable design in that I focus specifically on design’s relationship with nature. I review various attempts to design with nature in past and recent history, with attention to how design and research are still embedded in a Western conception of our relationship with nature inherited from the Scientific Revolution. Despite aspirations of designers to connect emotionally, philosophically and functionally with the natural world, nature remains subjugated: an ‘other’. I argue that with each ‘new’ approach to designing with nature from the Romantic Movement in the late 19th century, through to contemporary design and current design theory, designers inadvertently continue Modernist and colonialist power relationships that place humans at the top of a hierarchy, with nature at the bottom. These conditions are beginning to change as designers explore ecological theory beyond mainstream influences and as they engage with embodied research in direct relationship with nature.
Bioarchitecture-Inspirations From Nature
Gazi University Journal of Science, 2012
Engineers, architects, and artists often refer to nature as a basis. Many engineers find their structural inspiration from plant life, in a spider's web, a piece of coral, a beehive, or in the structural development of animals. Bioarchitecture is a particular moment in which architecture, engineering, and art converge as they are using the same inspirations. By taking a look around, designers can find inspiration everywhere-particularly in nature. Nature provides us with an amazing array of solutions for many complex problems that we face today-the quest to learn from nature in this way is "Bioarchitecture or biomimicry", and architecture can benefit from this kind of approach. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most importantly, what lasts here on Earth. Nature can teach us about systems, materials, processes, structures, efficiency and aesthetics (just to name a few). By delving more deeply into how nature solves problems that we experience today, we can extract timely solutions and find new inspirations. This paper deal with Aesthetic as a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the natural environment, which still fill us with a sense of awe and amusement.
WHITE PAPER DESIGN BY NATURE, NATURE BY DESIGN
Design in the Age of Experience , 2016
We are both researcher and designer. For us, comparing points of view and challenging opinions are activities that are necessary in order to become guides capable of exploring the future of society and driving current transformations. Under the aegis of Georges Balandier (1), we think we should revive and modernize imaginations by gathering new images from biological and digital discoveries, from virtual experiences and new machines. We are in the midst of a transformation to be played out with unprecedented yet barely used intellectual tools that call for such collaborations. Together, we must explore new ways of being part of the world (as biomimicry proposes) because repeating past methods and yesterday’s know-how can no longer guarantee "living together" on this planet. Mirroring scientific and intuitive methods, digital modeling and designing, allows for the complexity of living organizations to be represented, experiences to be co-created to validate assumptions and innovate, and imaginary worlds that carry common symbolism to be sought out. This biomimicry cross-discipline is a first step toward examining our respective disciplines and finding a way to embody ideas.
Biographical notes: Hisham A. Abdel-Aal graduated from Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt in 1984. He is currently an Invited Professor at Arts et Métier ParisTech where he leads efforts within a 'biomimetics for green manufacturing' research cluster. His research expertise falls within the broad field of tribology and sustainable design. His current interests emphasise bio-inspired design of functional and deterministic surfaces. He has authored more than 100 archival papers and book chapters and lectured on the subject in several countries.
Introduction from Design and Nature: A Partnership
Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019
Celebrating the 5th anniversary of this publication, we offer an overview of the intentions and the contents of the book. "We now know that ecological urgency demands more than a tweak of designed objects, design processes and even design systems. Partnering with nature therefore is a more disruptive and deeper change for design than many imagine when they read the friendly phrase “design and nature”. Caught as we are in our industrial Modern paradigm, embedded in thousands of years of boundary making, to move design from its human centrings and to begin to imagine what Plumwood (2009) calls positive and multiple centrings is radical, heresy almost." This introduction includes descriptions of how we envisioned the four ways of being with nature, or what the Buddha called the Four Postures.
Bio-inspired design: What can we learn from nature
URL: http://www. thinkcycle. org/tc- …, 2003
Bio-inspired design, as it will be developed in this essay, draws heavily on E.O. Wilson's concept of biophilia and related work in environmental aesthetics. There are other valuable approaches to bio-inspired design, particularly those stemming from a consideration of the functions and processes of nature as so eloquently described by Janine Benyus in Biomimicry. My focus here, in contrast, is on the forms and sensory attributes of nature that hold special psychological significance. Wilson defined biophilia as "the tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes." This fascination with life propels scientific inquiry as well as our aesthetic sensitivities. Wilson and others argue that because the brain evolved in a biocentric world, we should be especially tuned to features and attributes of nature that have had consequences for survival and reproductive success. As Steven Pinker writes in How the Mind Works: "The brain strives to put its owner in circumstances like those that caused its ancestors to reproduce." As well, the brain strives to avoid circumstances that reduce the chances of survival and reproduction. Thus, our minds have evolved both to seek out beneficial! ! ! places and things and to avoid the harmful. This includes living organisms as well as the natural processes that sustain life (especially light, water, and fire). Understanding what it is about nature that attracts or repels is at the core of bio-inspired design, as developed in this essay. Although we tend to equate design with the sense of pleasure and enjoyment, design also must confront hazards and dangers in the environment in ways that intuitively evoke avoidance behaviors. Mr.Yuk stickers are used to warn about harmful substances, just as smiling faces are used to convey pleasure with a desirable object. It is this link to emotions that we need to better understand, because design strives to evoke particular kind of emotional experiences, either as ends in themselves or as motivations for other behaviors, such as consumption, entertainment, and avoidance of hazards. Bio-inspired design is relevant to a wide array of applications-including places (communities, landscapes, buildings, rooms), toys, furnishings, tools, technologies, and vehicles. There are obvious connections between bio-inspired design, Kansei engineering, and emotion centered design, all of which aim to connect emotional experience more explicitly to the sensory and perceptual qualities of spaces and products.
Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) Let us for a moment think of an aspirin; you will immediately recall the mark in the middle. This mark is designed to help those who take a half dose. Every product that we see around us, even if not as simple as the aspirin, is of a certain design, from the vehicles we use to go to work, to TV remote controls. Design, in brief, means a harmonious assembling of various parts in an orderly form designed for a common goal. Going by this definition, one has no difficulty in guessing that a car is a design. This is because there is a certain goal, which is to transport people and cargo. In realisation of this goal, various parts such as the engine, tires and body are planned and assembled in a factory. However, what about living creatures? Can a bird and the mechanics of its flight be a design as well? Before giving an answer, let us repeat the evaluation we did in the example of the car. The goal, in this case, is to fly. For this purpose, hollow, light-weight bones and the strong breast muscles that move these bones are utilised together with feathers capable of suspension in the air. Wings are formed aerodynamically, and the metabolism is in tune with the bird's need for high levels of energy. It is obvious that the bird is a product of a certain design. If we leave aside the bird and examine other forms of life, we encounter the same truth. In every creature, there are examples of extremely well-conceived design. If we continue further on this quest, we discover that we ourselves are also a part of this design. Your hands that hold these pages are functional as no robot hands could ever be. Your eyes that read these lines are making vision possible with such focus that the best camera on earth simply cannot achieve.
Biomimicry Levels as Design Inspiration in Design
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
The relationship between design and nature has been intertwined for the past 400 years. Throughout history, designers have adopted nature to build shapes, forms, and ornamentation without understanding nature's behavior biomimicry. Nature's behavior biomimicry is a method that applies solutions to human problems by analyzing natural designs, processes, and systems. This innovative method refers to nature as an inspiration to solve design challenges. The method is the new science that studies nature as a model and inspiration to imitate the design and process of solving human problems. However, there is a lack of widespread and practical application of biomimicry as a design method; architecture commonly uses biology as a library of shapes, which is not biomimicry. Among the levels of biomimicry, the organism level is widely applied as a design tool to achieve a design solution. This paper reviews published research on the applications of biomimicry level, including its formative elements. Organism, behavior, and ecosystem level are mostly inspired or applied in the biomimicry concept. The content analysis was carried out to examine the published research articles on different perspectives of biomimicry and its application in design. The findings produce three levels of biomimicry that can serve as a regenerative design. There is a growing need for designs that work with nature to create a regenerative built environment, and designers can no longer ignore the relevance of bio-inspired theories and approaches to achieve a more sustainable future.
Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, 2012
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