With the advising help of:
Maartje Lammers
http://www.24h.eu/
&
Ilaria Mazzoleni
http://www.imstudio.us/
(Duration of work: August 2011-December 2011)
During my bachelors degree I developed a strong passion for sustainable design and how to look towards nature for inspiration regarding the built environment. For me, looking towards nature seems like a logical method to retrieve inspiration for design. Last year my interest in this topic resurfaced when I took an eco-design class, I designed a place of retreat based on the aesthetical inspiration of a butterfly cocoon. For the cocoon project I employed eco-strategies such as orienting my windows to capture natural sunlight, implemented a solar hydronic radiant under floor that pumped cold water from the river to cool the space, gained heat from solar glass tubes placed on the roof, and was comprised of sustainable materials. This process I applied to the cocoon project was two steps: 1. Mimicking nature and its organic forms, 2. Using sustainable systems by mimicking sustainable functions. For my graduation project, I would like to dive in deeper by exploring biomimicry; a science that encompasses nature’s solutions through evolution, thus providing inventions that work and last.
Asking Nature for the Interior Answer
As humans we are at a turning point in our evolution due to our rapidly growing population and unsustainable habits. Now is the time to ask ourselves “how can we live on this planet without destroying it?” (Biomimicry Guild) The answer is right in front of our faces, a discipline called biomimicry. Biomimicry is a new science that was termed and originated by Janine Benyus in her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Benyus enforces biomimicry as a new way to value, view, and rescue nature from the endangerment of our native ecosystems. By learning how to imitate natural forms and models, we can find inspiration and create for human design problems. For 3.8 billion years bacteria, plants, animals, and microbes have been evolving their ecological approach for survival (Benyus, 1997). “The Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but how we can learn to adapt our lives in the same way as nature does” (Benyus, 1997). Biomimicry can be applied and developed in everyday life by using two methods:
Defining a human need or design problem and look towards the ways other organismsor ecosystems solve this, termed “looking to biology,” or
Identifying a particular characteristic, behavior or function in an organism or ecosystem and translating that into human designs, termed “biology influencing design” (Biomimicry Guild).
Today, biomimicry is being successfully applied to holistic medicine, architecture, product design, materials science, and transportation. In the field of interior architecture, Biomimicry is still in its infant stage. Its growth will require finding a new approach to incorporate biomimicry into the built environment in a sustainable and practical manner. The future of the interior can be assessed and created by researching animals, plants, and microbes to help solve new built environment solutions and problems to better serve human lifestyles around the world (biomimicryinstitute.org).
I will begin by following a set of guidelines presented by the Biomimicry Institute involving a six step cycle to help bioligize my interior challenge, question the natural world for inspiration, then evaluate to make sure my final design mimics nature at all levels form, process, and ecosystem (Biomimicry Institute). These six points will be expanded as my research develops. My application of biomimicry will use the “looking to biology” approach. All of my research and findings for the graduation project will be documented through a combination of a typed report including words, pictures, graphs, charts, and by other means such as a digital catalog (which could become a blog), drawings (plans, sections, details, perspectives, renderings), physical implementation through models, and the entire design process will be filmed, edited, and presented in the end.
I will identify a human need, problem, or condition. In January of 2012 I will move to Dallas, Texas an area of the United States that has significant regional differences in comparison to my native state of Michigan, and where I study in, the Netherlands. The weather in Dallas is what triggered my inspiration to localize my project within its vicinity. The state of Texas tends to receive warm dry winds from the north and west in the summer bringing temperatures of 102° F (39° C) and heat humidity indexes soaring to as high as 117° F (47° C) (NOAA, 2011). These numbers classify Dallas’ climate to be humid and subtropical, defined by hot summers and mild winters with rare snowfalls (City-Data, 2009). I will look at the ecology of interior spaces in terms of climate. I believe that by localizing my research to be about Dallas with regards to its geography, climate, social, temporal, and interior/architectural conditions, I will find a specific interior situation that I will bring to the surface. This interior situation will then be solved by looking towards nature and beginning the biomimicry process. Once the function has been identified in terms of what I want my design to do (not what I want to design), I can begin to look to nature for inspiration.
http://www.scottsdalepublicart.org/collection/MMR.php 
http://inhabitat.com/urban-cactus-building/ 
