Nature does it better
The annual Bioneers conference, from San Rafael, CA, is “a gathering of scientific and social innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and communities”. The event features powerful speakers representing diverse approaches to sustainability.
Lucky for Bloomington residents, this weekend’s conference plenaries are being broadcast live via satellite to IU (click here for details). I stopped in today and checked out a provocative talk by Jay Hartmann, CEO of PAX scientific. PAX is an industrial design firm that uses patterns found in nature to improve industrial products. As Hartmann explained, millions of years of evolution have resulted in forms and systems that are unparalleled by human technology in their elegance and efficiency. PAX studies these ‘optimized geometries’ and applies them to design cleaner, more efficient and benign industrial products. For example the natural spirals have been used to create better fans with a variety of applications.
This overall approach to industrial design is known as Biomimicry and has been written about by Janine Benyus (see more here). Of course the strategy of using natural models as a means to design sustainably is not new. Permaculture design is based on this approach applied to food production, landscaping, and land-use. In the context of architecture, Christopher Alexander advocated for structure preserving transformations in his book Nature of Order. And most recently, Alexander’s work has inspired Eli Blevis to include the principle of “using natural models and reflection” in his manifesto for Sustainable Interaction design.
Hartmann’s talk suggests that this approach is gaining traction in the industrial world, which can only have positive implications for sustainability.