“Nature as model, measure, and mentor” — a guiding theme of biomimicry — sounds pretty comprehensive. But when you are in the thick of an actual design process, is biomimicry itself comprehensive?
The newest addition to BCI People, Stefanie Koehler, used biomimicry to design a more sustainable water purification system, called SolDrop. She submitted her results to the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge and was a finalist at the Global Biomimicry Conference in Boston. In addition to the design, she used her masters thesis (MCAD Sustainable Design program) to explore how biomimicry fit into the greater process and world of sustainable design. What she found:
“The experience of applying the Biomimicry methodology resulted in an evolution in my sustainable design thinking; however, other tools and methodologies will be required to move the design from idea to reality as well as to make it contextually relevant and appropriate”.
To learn more about SolDrop and her findings, you can download her thesis from our Resources page, under How.
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