Life’s Principles
One of my greatest goals as a creative is to become a designer of nature - I want to bridge the gap between the natural world and our human build one. A designer of nature… what does look like?
As I continue my education at MCAD as a sustainable design student, I am learning more about sustainable ideas, practices, and frameworks. A current course I am taking is a Biomimetic Design course - biomimetic design looks to nature to find solutions for pressing problems of our time. As I’m learning more about biomimicry, it has provided me with a framework to support my creative endeavor to become a designer of nature. That framework is known as Life’s Principles.
Life’s Principles are strategies that living beings use to survive in balance with their environment. These are principles that have been defined by the Biomimicry Guild.
One of the main overarching guidelines of Life’s Principles is that life creates conditions conducive to life. When looking at the natural environment, there really isn’t any “waste” - what is discarded from one system is energy and/or food for another. Everything that is created supports life in another form. However, in our current way of designing and manufacturing, we generate waste and by-products that is toxic to our natural environment and health.
To be a designer of nature is to design products that is conducive to life, in all stages of development, from manufacturing practices, in-use life, and how it is discarded. Life’s Principles provides the framework to be a true nature designer. To become a true designer of nature, the following questions are raised:
Does the design evolve to survive?
Does the design adapt to changing conditions?
Is the design locally attuned and responsive?
Does the design integrate development with growth?
Is the design resource efficient?
Does the design use life-friendly chemistry?
By using the DesignLens of Life’s Principles, we can design a future that is sustainable and empathetic to our natural environment and each other. The original gap between our natural environment and our human built world can now be connected and intertwined.