BioInspired! So What? Now What!

The international and interdisciplinary BID Community team collaborated on developing an entry for the 2011 International Algae Competition in the Algae Landscape Design category. The team decided to take a problem-driven approach, developing a bio-inspired systems solution involving algae that would address important problems associated with a particular place: Haiti both before and after the devastating earthquake of 2011.

A common thread in the Turning Ideas into Reality and Making a Living with BID conference calls was the need for more opportunities to do bio-inspired design. Janet Kübler suggested that the BID Community participate in the 2011 International Algae Competition which had the goal of developing “… an open source collaboratory that expands and shares a vision for algae in our future with design ideas for algae production landscapes, sustainable and affordable algae production systems”. Although the competition had a flavor of bio-utilization, the Algae Landscape Design track provided an opportunity to design a system that could incorporate ecological concepts and be inspired by the Life’s Principles.

In the course of the development of animal species, flying has been “invented” several times. The first winged insects began to populate the forest of the Carboniferous period about 350 million years ago - the wing surfaces of these insects were smooth. Butterflies with scaled wings began to fly into the sky of the Jurassic period. Through natural selection, the butterflies have been experimenting with scale coverage and scale microstructure for 210 million years. Among all present day insects, butterflies and moths with scale coverage are the record holders of two titles: long distance travel (butterfly Danaus plexippus L. (Figure 1) and flight speed (the flight speed of the moth Agrotis ipsilo was 113 km/h) [Sappington et al., 1992].

Igor Barteczko joined the BID Community in November and agreed to be interviewed in early December. His portfolio at ARCHITEORYZM demonstrates his creativity and graphic sense. Igor is a natural biomimic who also understands the importance of human culture and engineering. Ultimately, we need viable solutions to human problems that help re-connect us with the natural systems that support our existence.