Summary
Biomimicry is an emerging discipline that seeks nature’s advice and brings diverse stakeholders together to create designs that emulate the way nature functions, not just the way it looks. The field itself is a multidisciplinary endeavor, yet biomimicry educators frequently work alone. Pedagogical methods based on trial and error may waste precious time. In this study, a set of four biomimicry experts from diverse disciplines and different areas around the globe collaborated to compare pedagogy and analyze student work to illuminate best principles for teaching students to translate biology into design solutions, a key step in the biomimicry design process. A total of 313 assignments created by 179 different students were evaluated. The results showed that the inclusion of art in the learning of science, namely the hand drawing of the biological mechanism can lead to higher quality of abstracted design principles.
Art and Science of Biomimicry - artwork Jerlinga, Feltrinelli & Singhal
The code of this chapter is 01000010 01101001 01101111 01101101 01101001 01101101 01101001 01100011 01110010 01111001.
Come forth into the light of things, Let nature be your teacher.
~ William Wordsworth
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the ease at which this team came together to work across time zones and expertise. Our passion for biomimicry was the driver, and our empathy for each other is the connecting thread. We are also deeply humbled by the genius of all organisms around us, the limitless inspirations they shower us with and the awe we are left with whenever we open our eyes and truly see. ‘Perhaps in the end, it will not be a change in technology that will bring us to the biomimetic future, but a change of heart, a humbling that allows us to be attentive to nature’s lessons’ [29]. A special thanks to our students, without whom, this research would not have been possible.
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The authors declare no conflict of interests. The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Delft University of Technology—Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (2018). College of Charleston IRB-2020-06-04-183355—Protocol Exemption Integrated Science Volume 1 Chapter Art and Science of Biomimicry. Arizona State University HRB 503A Social Behavior Protocol Integrated Sciences vol. 1.
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Stevens, L., Bidwell, D., Fehler, M., Singhal, A. (2022). The Art and Science of Biomimicry—Abstracting Design Principles from Nature. In: Rezaei, N. (eds) Transdisciplinarity. Integrated Science, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94651-7_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94651-7_29
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