Biomimicry and Upcoming Research/Writings

Dissertation research is well underway and contributing factors with special meetings, lectures and getting in touch with relevant people is resulting in sound progress.

Over the past couple of days I have been looking at Paulo Portoghesi's "Nature and Architecture" which addresses the various elements and factors that we can relate the natural world to architecture from an internal and external view with specific refernece to the breakdown of elements that consist inside buildings. I will be publishing my analysis of this book in the Literature Review which will consider various approaches, ethics and viability concerns withing biomimicry for architecture. I will in time put this online.

November 30th sees me heading to "The Deep" Aquarium, in Hull, engineered and designed by Terry Farrell's Firm see link here. I am meeting with Colin Brown, Chief Executive to discuss the design of the building and hope I can share the information with The Deep after writing one of my chapters about it and it can potentially be provided as educational material internally and externally at "The Deep."

This will set me up nicely following onto a lecture the day after on December 1st at Bradford University with Chris Allen, Director of the “Ask Nature Project” run by The Biomimicy Institutionin the USA. It is an exciting opportunity to hear the latest from somebody directly inolved in this feild. I hope to catch up with Chris after the lecture and probe him with a few questions. 

More information regarding the Ten + One Lecture Series can be found here.

Korea Pictures: N/S Border

Turning Cardboard into Caviar

Carrying on my research into my dissertation investigating biomimicry and the role of natural design as a strategy for 21st century design; I came across a fascinating piece of writing online addressing biomimicry as a sustainable contributor in our environment.

Extract from The Telegraph Online:


"Devised by Graham Wiles of the Green Business Network, the ABLE Project, based in Wakefield, near Leeds, began by involving disadvantaged people in cardboard recycling. What it evolved into, however, is a system that mirrors a natural process: the "circle of life", in which each living thing, or its waste, provides the food for another.

"First, the young people involved started shredding the discarded paper and selling it as bedding for horses. Wiles then had the idea of collecting the soiled bedding and composting it in a wormery. He established a fish farm to raise Siberian sturgeon and ornamental Koi carp, feeding them on the worms. This year, the sturgeon produced their first batch of caviar.

"The chain doesn't end there. Wiles has now planted willow trees, fed on composted sludge from the local sewage works, which will be used to fuel a biomass boiler, to provide the optimal growing temperature for the fish. The waste from the fish tanks will then fertilise an orchard, tree nursery and vegetable plot. As Pawlyn explains, the ABLE Project "demonstrates the potential to turn a waste material into a high value product while yielding numerous social, economic and environmental benefits."


You can read the entire article "Biomimicry: why the world is full of intelligent design" on The Telegraph's Website.

Dr M Cutkosky (Standford University) on Bioinspired Design.

Email reply from Dr Mark Cutkosky, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University. Dr Cutkosky is Co- Director of the Center     for Design Research at Standford.
_____________________________________________________________

Dear Alexander,

As you point out, drawing inspiration from nature is a very old idea. But I think the recent growth in bio-inspired approaches to design can be traced to two factors:

(i) Biologists now have much better tools for understanding in detail how natural structures and processes work. Examples include scanning electron microscopes, genomics, microscopic force sensors, etc.

For example, it is only within the last decade that it has been possible to understand in detail the mechanisms by which gecko setae and spatulae adhere to surfaces using van der Waals forces.

(ii) Engineers now have much better tools and processes for creating complex structures that display some of the same behaviors as those found in nature. As an example, here is an article on the approach take in our laboratory:

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1894/1799.abstract

Other examples include new nanoscale fabrication processes.

Mark C.

_____________________________________________________________