Biomimicry 3.8–Something BIG is coming…

A new leap forward from the makers of the #Biomimicry Revolution

The cool guys over at the “Biomimicry Guild” + “Biomimicry Institute” + “AskNature” + “Biomimicry Professional Pathways” have united forces to create Biomimicry 3.8 a new revolution that will integrate and spread Biomimicry through an interconnected network like nature would do. First step is www.biomimicry.net where you can get a glimpse of what is about to come in the following months. So stay tuned for more upcoming news.

And also, for the ones in design disciplines demanding a deep introduction in the matter, look over at the pages in www.fastcompany.com/biomimicry for specific articles created as part of a partnership by FastCompany and Earthsky.org

Landscapes: Volume 2

An spectacular time-lapse video from Dustin Farrell showing how astonishing #Earth & #Nature can be

Watching in Full Screen and Top Volume highly recommended

And for the ones that have not seen yet the First Volume, here it goes:

Urbanized

A documentary from the director of Objectified & Helvetica about modern #urban #design

The film World Premiere was held at the Toronto Film Festival and now its screening across many US Cities. There will be a special London screening at 18:30 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre of the London School of Economics on October 21st. With a post-discussion with director Gary Hustwit and cast members Ricky Burdett (LSE Cities/Urban Age), Alejandro Aravena (architect, Elemental).

About the film:

Urbanized is a feature-length documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain.

Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it?

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The Secret Life of Buildings

A new show that measures the impact of #architecture in human life

We spend 85% of our lives inside but rarely, if ever, consider what impact the design and architecture of these spaces have on us. Yet the design of our living space can connect and silently shape our identity, self-esteem, relationships, chances at school, and even our weight and immune system.

Architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff looks at how architecture affects us at home, work and play, and discovers the secret ways that buildings profoundly affect our behaviour, feelings and identity.

In “The Secret Life of Buildings”, Thomas addresses the point from the real consumer perspective, as inhabitants of a human designed space, and breaks into pieces the nonsense of starchitects with big egos. Tom Dyckhoff challenges the works of architects like Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Bjarke Ingels, and Sir Norman Foster, putting them face to face with the people living/working/playing in the place they designed. The 3 episodes are centered around the building use typologies: Home, Work, Leisure, and some very questionable experiments on physical health or psychology are presented to fundament the findings.

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Beauty flourishes at night

 

#architecture #losangeles #LA Light from Colin Rich

No, you are not the center of the Universe!

Just a short video to remind us of how relative things become, when we look at the bigger picture. (nicely done by the way)

Bionic Innovation

An air-jelly-fish or a mechanic bird. The future is here, just watch it unfold #biomimicry

On the recent TED Global 2011 – The Stuff of Life (Edinburgh, Scotland. July 11-15, 2011), it was presented the artificial bird by Markus Fisher, and digging a bit more into it, there is an enormous quantity of projects carried out by ‘Festo’ that mimick life and develop technology with inspiration from nature.

Festo is a leading world-wide supplier of automation technology and the performance leader in industrial training and education programs. Through the Bionic Learning Network, they have been researching and developing projects with biomimicry principles since 2006, and you can see them all on their website.

Pepakura & Origami

“Between the folds” Documentary about the art & science of folding paper in the modern world through an ancient technique.

Widely awarded and acclaimed in film festivals, this movie covers the ancient technique of Origami (paper folding) and Pepakura (papercraft) originating from Japan, and how it is used nowadays by renowned scientists and artists, MIT and NASA included. They do it as a way for representing mathematics, to experiment with geometry and prototyping, or just to express beauty through art. I strongly recommend watching this inspiring and revealing film about a intriguing technique with plenty of potential.

Directed by Vanessa Gould from Green Fuse Films

And for the ones wanting to step further, you can download and experiment with Pepakura Designer, a program for converting 3D objects into paper sculptures. Or take a look at the work of other artists for inspiration, like Richard Sweeney, one of my favourites, or Isaac Salazar and Taras Lesko. Also, there are some good websites around this, like Pleat Farm and huge Flickr Galleries with examples.

Icosahedron by Richard Sweeney	Read Cursive by Isaac Salazar

You can see the Trailer of the movie below and if you like it

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Catalytic Clothing

#Fashion meets #Science [VIDEO] Public experiment in #ecodesign

This hybrid project from Helen Storey (artist) + Tony Ryan (scientist) develops the concept of purifying the air around us directly with the clothes we wear. It is based on an original idea, and as they state on their website Catalytic Clothing, it´s still work in progress. I hope we can see more of this in the near future and eventually a product we could try/test/buy, but so far the presentation it´s very attractive. It has been crafted nicely with an attention to detail, and leaves you with a hunger for more. I will surely keep an eye on it.

Biomimicry: Nature as a source for Innovation

 

Biomimetics, Bionics,… to define life-like creativity engineering or nature inspired human inventions.

Those words are relatively new, as they appeared in the last 50 years and since then, they are having an increasing interest and development in those fields. The term ‘bionic’ was coined by Jack E. Steele in 1958 and ‘biomimicry’ in 1982, and was popularized by scientist and author Janine Benyus in her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (strongly recommended). Biomimicry is defined in her book as a "new science that studies nature's models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems". Well, very clear but no so easy. Nature is hiding big secrets and humans take thousands of years to investigate and apply those special tweaks to human inventions. For example, Leonardo da Vinci created the concept for flying machines about 500 years ago but it wasn’t until 1903 when the Wright Brothers, succeed in creating and flying the first airplane, developed by observations of pigeons in flight.

For me, this is one of the most interesting parts of science, as it leads us to a more sustainable future. In addition we support our basis on ‘products’ that have thousands of years of evolution, and give us proof they are working quite nicely. And also we contribute to a better living consuming less resources and generating less waste.

Here you can find some very interesting talks from TED & the Atmoshphere event by Janine Benyus and also Michael Pawlyn designer of The Eden Project talking about Biomimicry in Architecture. And also, Asknature.org is an essential live source created by The Biomimicry Institute in collaboration with the giant Autodesk for collaboration and documentation of how Nature Intelligence solves some of the problems we are facing today. Enjoy!

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