Today we also had the possibility to visit the company InterfaceFLOR Entropy&Tactiles
This company producing carpets is already hard working on using principles and solutions found in nature to optimize their processes. Important things they found were that they had to change their design to deal with:
- cyclic processes
- dynamic, non equilibrium
3,8 billion years of evolution are to be used in Design! A lot of work has to be done in this field of research and I am sure lots of jobs can be created here.
Again we had to work in our project groups together to apply what we have learned on our chosen topic - WATER
First in the Scoping Phase we did a Brainstorming to figure out the real challenge:
We defined our Top function as:
- Store Water
- Purify Water
- Distribute Water
- Collect Water
- Synchronize Water intake
With help of Top functions you can “biologize” your problem and create the following question:
How does Nature COLLECT, STORE and CLEAN WATER synchronized in TIME and PLACE
To get this more specific to be used in Design, we also have to define some Non-Negotiables. Following were chosen:
- Drink-water Quality
- 24h Availability
- big city, to meet the needs of lots of people
- Area with infrequent, unpredictable rain
The Creating is basically searching for the best natural models
In the Literature (we used the Book “How Nature works” and the Internet) we found the following useful examples how nature deals with this problem:
- Wiry Tangels
They capture Water from fog. The fog condenses and is absorbed by fungi
- Welwitschia
Is a plant with large leaves guiding the water to the root of the plant, so the water is captured in the ground
- Bromeliad flower
uses hydrophobic leaves and hydrophilic hairs
- Camel
This animal does not need to drink for 5 days in the desert
Evaluating
To get some information about the Evaluating Phase have a look at Day 3
