Sarah Angne, University of Missouri-Columbia and The Art Institute of California-Inland Empire

Biomimicry: an Interior Design Teaching Tool
The field of interior design has been highly impacted by the sustainable movement, and designers have been using the biomimicry approach to solve design challenges. Foreseeing the demand for this concept, interior design educators understand the value of integrating biomimicry within their curriculum. However, is interior design academia really understanding biomimicry and utilizing the concept to its fullest within the classroom? Are there more effective ways to integrate the concept for maximized outcomes?

The following research grew from an investigation on the subject of biomimicry. An initial literature review defining biomimicry and identifying innovative biomimetic solutions linked the concept to the field of interior design. A comprehensive review of studies referring to interior design teaching tools was conducted to gain a better understanding of how current interior design courses were being taught. These established a method for analysis of how academia is currently using the biomimicry concept. An exploratory Internet search revealed that universities and colleges have integrated biomimicry into their curriculum.

A survey was distributed to over 500 members of the Interior Design Educators Council where 50 graduate and undergraduate professors from both CIDA-accredited and non-accredited programs responded to 16 questions, such as: “How has biomimicry been used in education, specifically interior design education?” and “Have interior design educators used biomimicry as a teaching tool?” Using the data from this survey, an undergraduate interior design studio was structured around biomimicry principles, which provided the opportunity for the students to create more sustainable and healthier interior technologies and designs.

The structure of this 11-week studio differed from a typical studio that would generally proceed linearly through the interior design process. The change allowed the course to roll out in a spiral shape spawning from the notion that life works in cycles. Utilizing nature’s cyclic behavior, the course content was covered multiple times allowing the students repeated encounters with the same material. With each spin, students deepen their knowledge, project development, and awareness of sustainability.

Karen Frasier-Scott, PhD, EnviroTech Design and EunSook Kwon, PhD, Industrial Design Program, University of Houston

Introducing Biomimicry into Design Education Using Triangulated Analysis Evaluation Tools
Effective integration of biomimicry into design education will be achieved when design students are able to consider biomimicry as one of their research tools to help them obtain design information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the knowledge, and integrate it into their design process. Biomimicry should become an integral tool used when the design student evaluates a Design Brief and begins to execute the project. In order to incorporate biomimicry into the design curriculum we will use a rubric of Triangulated Analysis Evaluation Tools which follows the “Illuminative Evaluation” methodology introduced by Parlett and Hamilton in 1972, 1977, 1987. (1) “Illuminative Evaluation is in effect a systematic focus on discovering the unexpected, using approaches inspired by anthropology rather than psychology.”(2) The evaluative focus in incorporating biomimicry into the design studio is to affect the design curriculum outcome, not the technology of biomimicry.

Catalina Freixas, Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis

Biomimicry in Architecture: A Biokinetic Approach
There is a conceptual similarity between the way an organism and a building engage their respective environments. A biological system responds to the unique condition of its ecosystem. Architecture responds to the unique conditions of the site. Building on this principle are the fields of biomimicry, the study of design and process in nature, and biokinetics, the study of movement within organisms. Biomimicry in Architecture: A Biokinetic Approach is a seminar that focuses on kinetics as an essential element of biomimicry in the context of architecture and employs the study of the kinetic aspects of biological systems – structure, function, and movement – to inform the design and engineering of buildings. A systematic approach to researching and translating the kinetic functions of organisms throughout the course leads to a successful bridging of biological and architectural concepts.

Biomimicry is presented as a collaborative, team-based course drawing students from a wide range of academic disciplines. Initially, student research teams select three organisms for deeper exploration. They identify the defining characteristics of the organisms and the natural processes that allow the organism to be kinetic. They compare organisms that perform in a similar manner and select a preferred organism to study based on availability of scientific references and illustrations. A series of diagrams, both extracted from existing scientific research and produced by students as original work, investigates the mechanical performance of the organisms. Building on their study, students produce physical and digital models to simulate the form and mechanical performance of the organism at the macro scale.

Delving deeper, the students define the interaction of opposing systems, such as surface versus structure, rigid versus flexible, or muscle versus bone. Through systematic dissection, documentation, and modeling, students investigate the multiple components and connections of the particular organism and natural process in terms of its mechanical performance at micro scales.

The Biomimicry Life’s Principles are used as a lens enabling students to focus their explorations by giving them a baseline to their research. The teams support their studies in relation to the organism’s ecosystem by understanding both the relationship of form and function and the ability to be locally attuned and responsive to an external environmental demand.

Finally, students propagate their initial study to create a kinetic tectonic surface or spatial system that responds to an architectural problem. Their final projects reflect the benefits of a methodical, progressive approach to researching and translating between the natural world and the built environment.

Curt McNamara, Minneapolis College of Art and Design

System Tools for Inter-discipinary Communication in Biomimicry
In this paper, the author explores three tools that aid cross discipline teams in exploring the connections between biology and design. The first is the 20 sub-systems of a living system posited by James Miller in Living Systems. The sub-systems will be summarized, and the results of explorations are shown. Another approach is the biomimicry taxonomy of solutions. This is available on asknature.org as an exploratory tool, and has been mapped by the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute as a pdf graphic. The author has used this tool in a classroom setting by classifying the strategies at a higher level, increasing its accessibility to designers. Third, the author has used systems viewpoints of boundary, modularity, network, hierarchy, and function to enable design students to take an abstract approach to their design situation. Examples of this approach will be shown and discussed.

Kiersten Muenchinger, Industrial Design Program, University of Oregon

Using a Motion Analysis Lab to Test Biomimetic Designs
Motion capture is a somewhat known entity today, due to the prevalence of groundbreaking movies that are using it well: Avatar, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Polar Express are examples. Because the technology of motion capture has been publicized along with the releases of these films, there is a positive connotation and cool-factor to the technology. Not only is the presence of the technology known, but the procedure of adhering small, reflective balls on a live person, having that person move within a matrix of video cameras, and producing results that can be manipulated in a virtual computer environment is somewhat familiar to people. Peoplesʼ general excitement about and familiarity with the complex technology of motion capture are helpful for introducing students who may be intimidated by biological research to an approachable area of the field.

That motion capture equipment is also used in physiology research is less familiar to people. The same balls, cameras and even software packages that are used for animations and special effects are used in these labs for human physiology research. At the University of Oregon, researchers within the lab focus on balance when walking, gait rehabilitation after hip and knee replacement surgeries, performance of running gaits, and ergonomics of sitting and rising. But what would product designers examine in this lab?

This paper describes how students in a Product Design course in Biomimicry at the University of Oregon utilized the Human Physiology Departmentʼs Motion Analysis Lab to analyze prosthetics. The design goal of the prostheses was to create a particular animalʼs gait when worn by a human trying to walk "normally." Two aspects of this projectʼs success are investigated: the vernacular understanding that the students had of this research lab, and initiating the design process at the “Emulate” phase in the Challenge to Biology Design Spiral. Film and motion capture footage from course projects are compared for efficacy in analyzing the prosthetic designs; prostheses inspired by the motion capture analyses are shown; and the design process for one surprisingly credible back brace inspired by a penguinʼs gait is more thoroughly discussed.