Biomimetic Design - BCI3 - Systems
Be, Contemplate, Design 3 - Observing Nature as a Designer: 10 minutes w/ eyes closed, 10 minutes with eyes open, and 10 minutes imagining.
Location: Cardiff, CA
Conditions: 10- 11AM. 83°. Sunny and varied light breeze off the ocean. The beach is packed the waves are still small and mushy the tide is outgoing.
My spot today as it the river mouth, a dynamic cross-section of systems. I hear the waves, people playing, and cars going by. There is a low constant hum from the sound of the waves and water rushing in and out below the causeway. The smell of sunscreen, salt, and seaweed is thick. The sand is not as hot here - it is more often disturbed and shifted around.
In front of me, the Pacific Ocean is seemingly endless and lightly textured today with the breeze. It is one of the largest systems on earth stretching out for thousands of miles and just shy of 7ft deep at it’s the deepest point filled with an unfathomable number of organisms from the smallest of microalgae to the humpback whales, each a system in and of itself and connected through currents carrying nutrient flows and other organisms containing their own systems of nutrients.
Where I am sitting the ocean meets the land on a sandy beach, the home to clams, birds, ants, seaweeds and more. There is a river mouth just to my right. The river acts like the arteries and veins in my own body carrying nutrients between the salt and fresh water systems. In with the tide some the salts, fish, and algae and out with the tide go’s bits of soil, freshwater, bugs, and other freshwater creatures and nutrients. The marsh acting as a filter between the two. Those creatures that have all adapted to live this life in flux between zones - how can we learn from there as our world continues to change and demands continuous change for us to survive. We need to be more flexible within our communities and our ways and adjust how our food systems flow and how we treat waste or how can we eliminate as this system does where it is flushed out into another system that needs it.
Another systems runs by and barks - dogs are everywhere - what is making that system bark, it is anxious, stressed or happy? Something about how it is coming in contact with the systems around it is causing this reaction. The bark creates reactions from other dogs and people. How do sounds affect our environments and ourselves?
It has been hot sitting here - it is time to cool my system - off for a swim.
(This post is intended for my colleagues at the MASD program. It is an exercise in developing my Biomimetic Design skills with the goal of receiving construtive feedback to further my skills.)