Day 1: A TU Delft welcome

During this first day of our Athens programme at TU Delft, we got to know the campus and a bit of university history. The story behind TU Delft’s logo, featuring a flame above the U, was especially appealing to me. The tale of Prometheus and his gift of fire to mankind as a metaphor for human technology, is a striking one and it certainly is a good attribute for a technical university.
After lunch, we could indulge in our specific Athens programme, which I had chosen to be a course in Biomimicry by Dr. Jaco Appelman. The course commenced with a lecture on Presence by Caroline Nevejan. This lecture was one of the strangest I have experienced during my 5-year long academic career at KU Leuven. Not only was the content of the lecture completely new to me, I also had great difficulty understanding the coherence and logic underlying the topics. However interesting the idea of the 4 principle axes (you – not you, here – not here, now – not now, know – not know), I struggled to understand the practicle examples that were given throughout the lecture. We succeeded, however, in offering a clear and concise presentation about a situation called ‘Getting Food’. All in all, I enjoyed the lecture, but couldn’t keep myself from wondering whether I had chosen the right course to follow. All doubt or suspicion were quickly removed as Dr. Appelman commenced his introductory lecture on Biomimicry. I found this lecture to be more like what I was expecting from a Biomimicry course at TU Delft, and greatly enjoyed listening to the fascinating examples of nature’s superior technical intellect.
In between Mrs. Evejan’s and Dr. Appelman’s lectures, we got to fill out our personal profiles on the Being Here site. I found this to be a truly inspiring and beautiful environment to learn, study and just generally gather ideas of various authors spanning a plethora of disciplines.