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Who needs inspiration? Scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, inventors, artists, teachers, politicians...almost everyone needs inspiration at some point. People need inspiration to help them create products, design solutions, and solve problems.
As teachers of children's technology and engineering, it is beneficial to help students appreciate the role of inspiration in design. Both novice and expert designers need inspiration, and it can come from almost anywhere. When designers are open to new ideas, chances are they'll be inspired by something that can be just the trick to help them overcome obstacles, fabricate new goods, or create ingenious products.
Janine Benyus is a scientist and science writer who has focused much of her attention in the past 15 or more years on inspiration. Benyus and many others are passionate about looking to nature for inspiration on how to solve human problems and doing so in an environmentally mindful way. If we want our next generation of citizens and consumers in this technological society to value sustainable and environmentally friendly design, helping young designers to better understand inspiration from nature seems like the perfect place to start.
biomimicry and biomimics
Benyus (1997) shares her research and insights in a seminal book titled, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. She cleverly defines biomimicry as the "...conscious emulation of life's genius" (p. 2), and her book is filled with interesting stories about how we can look to nature to answer important questions such as how to feed ourselves, harness energy, make things, heal ourselves, conduct business, and more. Benyus (1997) convincingly explains that nature has been solving problems for 3.8 billion years and..."in short, living things have done everything we want to do, without guzzling fossil fuel, polluting the planet, or mortgaging their future. What better models could there be?" (p. 2).
Benyus (1997) introduces readers to many of the people she met and interviewed who study nature for the purpose of mimicking it to solve human problems. These people-called biomimics-get inspiration from nature and use this information to design practical, efficient, and remarkable solutions to human problems. In effect, biomimics are designing solutions to technological and engineering problems using nature as their mentor.
People have looked to nature for ideas on solving problems for hundreds of years. For example, there are...