Greengaged

photo by: Rhea Daley-Serieux

On Wednesday, Greengaged warmly welcomed Michael Pawlyn, founder of Exploration Architecture to the curatorial stand. Before being joined by his speakers Melissa Sterry, Belina Raffy, Julian Vincent and Andy Middleton, Pawlyn began his day entitled "Biomimicry in Design: Learning from Nature" with his definition; "Biomimcry is looking at nature as a source of new sustainable solutions.”

The days first speaker, Melissa Sterry, Founder and CEO of Societás, began by outlining the key trends of the next few decades. Through the use of a fast moving and fascinating slideshow, Sterry identified our emerging needs as: biodiversity, food and water scarcity, changing weather patterns, natural resource depletion and wastestream recycling. She proposed that buildings in the future will no longer be concrete jungles, instead they will be inspired by organic forms. She further outlined some emerging principles for 21st century design, including: Living design (design with less chemical elements), symbiosis, closed loops (there is no waste in nature, there shouldn’t be in construction), organic origins (as nature intended), micro-energy (self-powered design) and muti-tasking design. Sterry continued to describe how it is time to throw away the rule book, bring a multitude of disciplines together (i.e. architects, scientists, chemical engineers) and move into a radical new period. She did notably acknowledge that this kind of futuristic architecture (and thinking) is currently only happening in small pockets.

Michael Pawlyn described three projects that he had worked on that used natural forms. The first and most famous was the Eden Project in Cornwall. Using bubbles as its inspiration, its construction is based on the ideas of famed futurist and architect Buckminster Fuller. They didn’t want to use glass because they couldn’t make the squares big enough, so instead they used ETFE which was lighter and could be inflated. The other project was an eco rainforest which re-created a rain forest but unfortunately didn’t get built. The third is a concept for a huge building in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, which is inspired by the Namibian beetle... this little critter harvests its own water in the desert, and since Las Palmas imports all its water, it was a fitting inspiration.

Belina Raffey led the group in some improvisational exercises about giving and accepting ideas. These became more complicated and varied throughout the day, including throwing imaginary balls and breaking into imaginary spaces. Raffey teaches these exercises to executives and at business schools.

Then Michael Pawlyn handed small groups a series of photographs of bugs and organisms, and these greengaged participants had to then pitch a design idea based on that organism ....Bombadier beetles, lotus leaves and humpback whales were all turned into inventive, somewhat preposterous design ideas.

The next speaker of the day was Julian Vincent, Professor of Biomimetics at the University of Bath, and Associate Chief Editor of the Journal of Bionic Engineering. He has invented a system of thinking and looking at biomimicry called BioTRIZ. He wants to turn ideas in a biological context into an engineering context. His view is that; "Biomimicry is the implementation of good design from nature." There are three levels to the development of his theory:

• Level l is “what can I copy and how”. Velcro started it all, inspired by burdock seeds sticking to a dog’s fur. The lotus leaf is another inspiration: after raining the water on the leaf divides into droplets. Exterior paint that cleans itself was inspired by that.
• Level 2 examined how problems are solved in biology. He and his colleagues looked at thousands of examples of this. He gave an interesting example of honey comb shaped insulation which solved a design problem based on changing the shape of insulation.
• Level 3 asks “what do I want to improve?” In this step, one analyses what “stops me making that improvement.” His TRIZ system is an intricate problem solving technique based on 40 inventive principles.

The final speaker was Andy Middleton, creator of the Do Lectures. He gave an inspirational talk about the urgency of changing our thinking: stating how we only have 1000 days (until 2012) to reduce the world’s carbon output by 10%. His thrust focused on the need for community, building on better local resources and truly focusing on people's needs. He is a great believer in grass roots solutions, expertise and collaborative projects.

Michael Pawlyn discussed the ABLE project in Yorkshire. Originally a small initiative started to involve handicapped and reformed junkies in a recycling project, it ended up as a fish farm, with vegetables being grown to feed the fish and the people, with all kinds of outgrowths. In an effort to treat waste not as a problem, but as a positive initiative to try something new, it developed into an eco-system and business project that is inspirational and all encompassing.

See more photographs of Michael Pawyln's Biomimicry day.

Michael Pawlyn will be speaking at the Barbican on October 8, 2009 about a Sahara Forest project. 

photos by: Rhea Daley-Serieux