Design Like Nature

★“Fascinating...An appealing resource sure to spark an interest in biomimicry, from casual readers to budding scientists. Recommended for all libraries.”—School Library Journal, starred review Did you know that lamps can be powered by glowing bacteria instead of electricity? That gloves designed like gecko feet let people climb straight up glass walls? Or that kids are finding ways to make compostable plastic out of banana peels? Biomimicry, the scientific term for when we learn from and copy nature, is a revolutionary way to look to nature for answers to environmental problems such as climate change. In Design Like Nature young readers discover innovations and inventions inspired by the environment. Nature runs the entire planet with no waste and no pollution. Can humans learn to do this too? It's time to step outside and start designing like nature.

In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the constructal law, accounts for the evolution of these and many other designs in our world. Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current—of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical “flowcharts” or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies. All are governed by the same principle, known as the constructal law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.

The first design book that translates elements of nature--including flora, water, and wood--into elements of decor for beautiful, lived-in, bohemian interiors, from acclaimed designer and tastemaker Erica Tanov. Inspired by nature's colors, textures, and patterns, design icon Erica Tanov uses her passion for textiles to create beautiful, timeless interiors that connect us to the natural world. Now, in her first book, Design by Nature, Tanov teaches you how to train your eye to the beauty of the natural world, and then bring the outdoors in—incorporating patterns and motifs from nature, as well as actual organic elements, into simple ideas for everyday decorating and design. Design by Nature contains new and imaginative decorating ideas for an organic and bohemian style that mixes and layers rugs, pillows, throws, and drapery, and incorporates unique patterns and fabrics such as shibori, ikat, and jamdani, all stunningly photographed by renowned photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo. With topics ranging from embracing imperfection in your home, to seeking out flea markets, to displaying your collections, Design by Nature takes an enduring and intuitive approach to design that transcends fleeting trends and encourages you to find your own personal style, source of creativity, and connection to the natural world. You don't need to travel to distant locales to find beauty; it's all around us, from the crackle of fallen leaves to the jagged bark of a tree.

In 1969, Ian McHarg's seminal book, Design with Nature, set forth a new vision for regional planning using natural systems. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, a team of landscape architects and planners from PennDesign have showcased some of the most advanced ecological design projects in the world today. Written in clear language and featuring vivid color images, Design with Nature Now demonstrates McHarg's enduring influence on contemporary practitioners as they contend with climate change and other 21st-century challenges.

In Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design, author Maggie Macnab takes you on an intimate and eclectic journey examining the unending versatility of nature, showing how to uncover nature’s ingenuity and use it to create beautiful and compelling designed communications. Written for designers and creative thinkers of all types, this book will guide you through a series of unexpected a-ha! moments that describe relationships among nature, art, science, technology, and design. Through explanation and example, you will learn about natural processes, consisting of everyday patterns and shapes that are often taken for granted, but that can be used effectively in visual messaging. Explore the principles all human beings intuitively use to understand the world and learn to incorporate nature’s patterns and shapes into your work for more meaningful design. By recognizing and appreciating a broad range of relationships, you can create more aesthetic and effective design, building communications that encompass the universal experience of being part of nature, and that are relevant to a worldwide audience. Teaches how to understand and integrate the essential processes of nature’s patterns and shapes in design Includes key concepts, learning objectives, definitions, and exercises to help you put what you learn into practice Features a foreword by Debbie Millman and reviews and discussions of practice and process by some of the world’s leading designers, including Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister, and Ellen Lupton Includes profiles of street artist Banksy, creative director and author Kenya Hara, and typographical designer Erik Spiekermann

Repackaged with a new afterword, this "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.

Design in engineering and science has often been inspired by nature. This has been more evident in recent years, after a period during which our civilization thought in terms of taming rather than working in harmony with nature. The consequences of that approach are still with us and have resulted in a world increasingly homogenized, lacking in biodiversity and with increased pollution. Mankind has been slow to learn and even slower to apply the lessons that nature offers, in spite of the urgency of our predicament. This book contains papers presented at the fourth International Conference on Comparing Design in Nature with Science and Engineering . The emphasis of this Volume is on engineering and architectural applications and on biomimetics, reflecting in some measure current interest in finding environmentally friendly solutions which also optimize the use of natural resources. The contributions have been arranged into the following topics: Biomimetics; Shape and Form in Engineering Nature; Nature and Architectural Design; Natural Materials and Surfaces; Complexity; and Education.

"The structural designs that occur in nature - in molecules, in crystals, in living cells - appear in this fully illustrated book as a source of inspiration and study of design of man-made structures" -- BOOK JACKET.