Looking To Nature For Design Solutions

Imagine looking to nature for design inspiration beyond application of form, but for our application of technologies too. Think about using the naturally built world as a model for the human built world so to create a more sustainable, healthy way of living and solving problems. It is apparent that nature has already solved most of the problems that humans still struggle to find solutions to, and manages to do it in the most efficient and strategic way possible. “Biomimicry” is essentially this, the process of emulating nature’s natural strategies and patterns in our own design technologies, therefore enabling them to adapt much more sustainably to our environments. This, I feel is crucial in reversing the way we approach the design process, by shifting our energy towards finding solutions and learning from existing organisms instead of focusing on implementing completely artificial solutions that work against the earth's systems.

Jane Benyus, the biologist who coined the term, shares amazing insight on innovative, sustainable design ideas drawn directly from nature in this inspiring presentation on Biomimicry.

Giving Back to the Grid

Finally, an incentive for me to go to the gym. I've always had reservations about going. Mainly, because I could never piece together why I needed to spend so much money at a facility that consumes so much energy just so I could burn a bit off. All that energy expended by hundreds of thousands of people at gyms just ends up being lost everyday. The most logical thing to do would be to harness this energy people are PAYING to get rid of. Capturing the energy we burn is a more sustainable way to work out, but also more economically feasible for the gyms who would save on electricity bills. In turn that should slash prices on gym fees for customers too. Personally, I think this would put back some of the fun into a grueling work out. Knowing that I could contribute back into the system would motive myself and I'm sure many health conscious environmentally conscious folks to get active at the gym. Perhaps one day we can have this technology in our homes getting everyone to participate in a bit of physical activity on a regular basis. A reduction in North American obesity and energy consumption, talk about killing two birds with one stone.

The inventor, Lucien Gambaroto also makes a few important points about individuals and their ability to contribute at all levels. We don't have to be inventors or government officials to make changes in our environment. Each and every one of us has the ability to enforce change and we have to take responsibility for the decisions we make. As consumers we can choose to support services who are finding alternative ways to fuel themselves. We can write letters to government, invent our own source of energy, and even something as simple as educating others is contributing on some level. 

Creativity is key when solving any problem and luckily its a resource that is in abundance in the human population. I have a theory that if we have enough brain power and creativity to inflict so much damage to the Earth, there is certainly enough brain power and creativity to fix it.

A New Sound

After the lecture on lighting, I wondered about other electromagnetic waves our bodies are constantly submerged in that we can readily detect. The first one that came to mind was sound. Similar to light, sound is another type of radiation that our senses are able to pick up. It is also a natural by product of when we talk, when two objects come into contact with one another, basically whenever air is disturbed (which is almost all the time). There are very few occasions where I find myself in complete silence, even when I sleep I can still hear the wind and cars passing by. Although sound waves contain much less energy than light waves, we shouldn't ignore the fact that it is still a form of energy that constantly surrounds us. A source of energy that we can potentially harness on a smaller scale. This article from Science Daily explains how turning excess heat into electricity by using sound is an efficient way to recycle waste heat.

To see article, please click Sound 

Energy is all around us and in vast amounts, the only problem is tapping into these sources. Opening our eyes and ears to new solutions often found in the most obvious places is necessary to move forward in our search for usable energy. Diversifying and expanding our energy resources will also result in more stable and resilient energy supplies for future generations to come.

Building your own wind turbine

Backyard wind turbines would be a great and cheap way to generate power in a city as windy as Winnipeg. By building our own sources to generate energy we can starting giving back to the system not to mention save ourselves a whole lot of cash. Here is the definitive guide to making your own wind turbine for under $150! The astronomer (yes he's probably a genius but he claims its really not that hard) who built the turbine gives you a detailed step by step list of instructions, breaks down all the prices of parts, even showing the prices of generators on eBay. 

Click to find out how to harness energy in your own back yard.

The road to finding alternate energy sources able to sustain our wants and needs is not going to be an easy one. We all need to work hard and be self motivated to think of our own solutions instead of waiting for solutions to be discovered by someone else. Because the more ideas we come up with, the better armed we will be to face the many problems we need to confront.