As the world begins to strive for a sustainable future, the concept of Bio-inspired design and it’s importance now gains more recognition and popularity in practically all fields of design.
This reading explores the implementation, usage, limitations, etc. of bio-utilisation, bio-inspiration and bio-affiliation. “Two of the most commonly used techniques in industrial biotechnology are bio-utilisation, and bio-remediation. As their names describe, the first technique is the use, or utilisation, while the second technique is the remediation, or correction of something that is not functioning adequately, through the use of biological elements.” (Montana-Hoyos & Fiorentino, 2016). In these techniques, nature itself or natural elements are being utilised in some way, however, bio-inspired design refers to when nature is used only to draw inspiration from, with regard to anything—form, structure, behaviour, etc.
As we’ve learnt before, the concept of biomimicry closely resembles that of bio-inspired design—“the main difference of biomimicry with other BIDs [bio-inspired designs] is that one of it’s main goals is the conservation of life and nature, thus relating to environmental sustainability.” (Montana-Hoyos & Fiorentino, 2016). Simply imitating nature in form or structure does not benefit or contribute in conserving the environment—the factor of sustainability must be taken into account as well— This is where bio-inspired design becomes biomimicry: when relationships and behaviours within a system are inspired by nature as well.
However, bio-affiliation shows that humans do not only depend on nature in order to make use of its resources for industrial purposes. The biophilia theory suggests that we “have an inherent human inclination to affiliate with natural systems and processes, especially life and life-like features of the non-human environment.” (Montana-Hoyos & Fiorentino, 2016) The text goes on to describe how “contact with nature has strong positive effects in human beings, in terms of healing from diseases, productivity at work, etc.” (Montana-Hoyos & Fiorentino, 2016) This explains why, for example, when overcome by stress, a walk outside or sitting by the beach does wonders to rejuvenate the mind.
Humans are strongly in-tune with and dependant on nature—it’s a shame it took years of it’s exploitation to finally realise this fact. Moving forward, the more people are educated about sustainability and its benefits on the environment as well as on humans, the closer we can get to attaining a fully sustainable economy.
Bibliography
Montana-Hoyos, C. & Fiorentino, C., 2016. Bio-Utilization, Bio-Inspiration and Bio-Affiliation in Design for Sustainability. The International Journal of Designed Objects , Volume 10(Issue 3 ), pp. 1-18.
Gif- Michel, A. [image] available at: https://dribbble.com/shots/14386760-ECO
accessed on: 1 December 2020
Couldn’t agree more💯💯👍