Education

Here we will perform a functional analysis of the concept "education" with the goal of decomposing it into its constituting and fundamental motives, goals and functions.

Our starting point for the functional analysis was the question "why do we educate, and why do people want to be educated?". As an answer to these questions we came up with the following general underlying motives of education.

First, people want to be educated because they want to explore their interests and feed their curiosity. In short, we concluded that the first motive boils down to personal development. Second, we found that a major motive to pursue education is the desire for prosperity. From a student's point of view this is the desire to lead a prosperous life, without a lack of material needs. From the organizer's point of view (often the state), it is the desire for the nation to prosper that drives high investment in education. As a third motivation we agreed that people often join an educational institution for social aspect, i.e. the desire for social interaction and, by extension, exchange of ideas.

Although this analysis was useful in defining more clearly the goals and needs of the design process, we agreed that it would be more interesting to start from a different question, namely: what are the basic functions and goals of education and furthermore; how do we adapt our design to support these functions in the best possible way? Here we concluded that there are three major pillars of education. The first pillar is the transfer or dissemination of information, the second pillar is the generation of new knowledge or information and, finally, the third pillar is the storage of information or knowledge so that it is not lost.

Now, for each of these pillars we could proceed by asking ourselves how this function could be supported or improved, using solutions found in nature. For this we thought of a set of basic prerequisities that need to be fulfilled for each pillar, which provided a next step towards specific requirements for our design.

First we identified some prerequisities for the generation of new knowledge and information, in other words: prerequisities for successful innovation, research and development. We agreed that these prerequisites include: an environment that stimulates creativity and curiosity, that offers opportunities for experimentation without punishment. Furthermore the environment needs to facilitate cooperation and the exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas. Hence, these requirements would be included as special points of attention in the design of the building.

For the successful dissemination of knowledge we identified the following requirements. Information should be available in a modular way, so that it can be made fit for personalized education, and for people flowing into the department from different backgrounds. Furthermore, we agreed on a need for project-based learning, where students would absorb the information in an active instead of passive way. In general, we wanted that information would be spread and absorbed more organically than in traditional forms of education, and that the dissemination would be made fit for emerging forms of education.

Finally, for successful storage of information we identified these key features: the information should be easily retrievable and copyable, while still being stored in a compact way. Not only should it be easy to copy, we also found that it was important that the information should be variable, i.e. easily modifiable and that data should be easily merged with other sources. These principles were mainly gleaned from the principles of the spread of genetic information in nature.

Since we regard the building as a living organism in the design, we have to design a central nervous system through which it informs and connects its different organs. This will make sure that information is spread and stored throughout the whole building and that it is a living entity that learns as a whole and in which different subgroups interact.

Just as with the human body a central nervous system detects, transfers and filters information. Such an organic structure is also applicable to the Bio-Lab faculty. The goal is to create a organic education system in which the faculty (human body) is equipped with a system similar to a nervous system. To be more specific, three main functions have been selected that result in an organically communicating faculty.

1. Collecting information
This system can detect and collect information about the environment such as humidity, temperature and light. This information can result in a reduction of energy use and will also contribute towards more energy conscious behavior. Furthermore the system also collects information about the energy and water consumption of the building. This information is automatically granted by the water and energy groups and this will be reported to the energy and water managements. Finally the system should be able to sense activities in the building. This will stimulate the efficiency between the communication between people.

2. Transferring information.
The information collected, detected needs to be transferred and filtered so that the outcome will only display the information needed.

3. Delivering information.
Finally this information is delivered to the people of the faculty, and is showed in a way.

In this section we propose a mechanism for the efficient storage and retrieval of information based on the storage and readout of genetic information in living organisms.

One of the key aspects with regard to education is the efficient storage and retrieval of information. A prime example of this in nature can be found in the encoding of genetic information in DNA, which is meticulously folded into compact structures and only unfolded and read out when specific genes need to be read out.

In its passive state the DNA strand are wrapped around so-called histone molecules and then folded into complex chromatin macrostructures. In this way the DNA strands, which are extremely long, are efficiently and compactly stored away when not needed. Only when a specific gene needs to be transcribed, helper molecules unfold the DNA strand at the location where the gene can be found, and transcription ensues.

We believe that this concept can be successfully applied to the organization and storage of books, magazines and other supporting materials in a faculty building. We propose that the majority of books be stored away in a compact and space-saving way below ground, such that they take up a minimal of functional space that can be used for other activities. Books could then be automatically retrieved by a robot system upon request.

As such the library space can be reduced to a smaller space that is more focussed on offering a environment for reading and collaboration. For example, it could offer a well-designed study and reading environment and potentially designated spaces to work in groups.

Since the core of Biomimicry is research,
this function needs to be the core for the faculty
as well.