While there is much discussion on Design DNA & Intelligent Design on this forum, I would like to know if designers think that
- Nature has a viable design process
- Life forms are a result of Design
i saw this on yahoo today thought it might be of interest.
how natural design of habitat influenced ants.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060406/sc_space/firstflowerstriggeredboominantdiversity
there’re some sources and a web site mentioned in this article that might also help you.
" 11,800 known species of modern ants probably arose from a single species millions of years ago "
That is 11,800 designs from one design ! 150 million years latter.
Wonder if any desinger out here is capable of designing an ant ?
Why design an ant? The money is in the flowers.
Ok, Can any one of you desingers design a better flower than what is out there ?
Absolutely – as long as you don’t ask me to do it from scratch. We have doing it for hundreds if not thousands of years. Cross-pollinating plants produces varieties not seen in nature and has been done probably since the dawn of agriculture. Now with gene-splicing you can eliminate the inefficiencies of cross-pollinating.
Remember tulips were actually currency in the Netherlands with the rarer, “unnatural†varieties commanding the greatest value. Also, as a side note for ufo, the tulip is the national flower of Iran.
I think that the model or the program of nature when studied and understood correctly, is a viable way to practice. However design has at this point become its own entitiy living and breathing in nature. Unfortunatly its breaths have brought upon us a great burden. A burden that Designers will have to work for decades or even centuries to correct. ecologically, politically,all design discplines will have there places in the process of the fix.
So if by that you meen fitting back in to nature, the cycle that for so long we thought we had to fight, we now realize the need to co-excist and become one with nature.
What do you mean by process?
What do you think the process of nature is?
How could we be a result of design, if we created it in our minds?
Do you mean that culture is a result of design, because that is true? Or maybe that pollution is a result of design, which is all true!
Just curious please specify!
different flowers in iran have different meanings.
tulip= lover’s blood, ultimate sacrifice
rose= dignity, honor, depth of feeling
jasmine= balance, contemplation, philosophical prowess
narcisuss= boldness, celebration, unity
iris= surprise, knowledge, expansion
holly-hock= humble, ordinary, plain fun
violet= melancholy, uncertain love, misplacement
based on classical persian poems.
this is a translation of a poem by hafez, goethe’s favorite poet, i did as an example:
your lock of hair swirls like violets
when your smile passes through haze
o sweet smelling flower don’t burn a wish
who speaks the truth night after night
i got crippled breathing the angels’ blames
of a world that finds me a burden in tales
so look at our proud hidden love
that breaks the crown’s side crest
although drinking wine doesn’t fit my dress
i do all this pretending to your content
aye spell of your love will leave my head
when this shallow mind turns to craze
on turn of my eyes does your fancy rest
this calls for gratitude to god and his place
it’s a nice spring day your face on the grass
and me singing you the words i learnt from days
I think that using the process of nature would lead us to deisgn the exact things you spoke of, flowers, ants, etc. Which as a process has its places, but that is for scientist, and has as many if not more bad things going for it than it does good.
As a counter point, If designers were to study and understand nature they would see that instead of designer ants and flowers, we should be creating choices (products) that lead us to live like the ants and like the flowers.
that will happen. i hope!
Augi,
by design process, I mean the design process in nature which is now well understood.
- Designs being modified gradually from a successful design - evolution
- Designs being created by a thoughtless process - mutation
- Designs competing against each other to be successful – life
- Successful Designs proliferating
Pls note that 3) is not a random process, but a complex multi-criteria test which is very real. All life around you is a result of intense life/death design contest – which is still going on, except for our species which has exited the game some time ago.
Human interpretation of design with due respect to all its complexity and intellectualization and resulting confusion is best left aside, when discussing a design process that is vastly successful going on for millions of years doing design of impeccable quality.
"Absolutely – as long as you don’t ask me to do it from scratch. We have doing it for hundreds if not thousands of years. Cross-pollinating plants produces varieties not seen in nature and has been done probably since the dawn of agriculture. Now with gene-splicing you can eliminate the inefficiencies of cross-pollinating. "
Yes, farmers and genetists have being designing this way. but what about desingers - who refuse to see such activity as design ?
They should open their eyes. Why isn’t that design? Because is isn’t some plastic part destined for the landfill? One of the greatest achievements of humans was to develop wheat with a shorter stalk so it can support more grain and therefor feed more people. That is problem solving at its best, unlike designing a chess set with green and orange translucent blobs.
It seems like your using the idea of nature and the explanation of how it works to describe how the design industry works. but even still the way you explain “the process” is only at the surface of what nature actually could do for design.
Nature waste Nothing
Design waste many things
Nature is Objective
Design is Subjective
unless you think that alligators know about polar bears…
Design is many things aside from nature, it exhibits many similar characteristics of the natural cycle. I think you have confused the cycle of nature and natural things into one thing. Yes we are human, we are part of nature. However design is something we created that is effecting nature. Design is at this point effecting nature so they have become seperate.
They are both Cyles though…
What is successful design based on the process of nature?
You are explaining Design the same way we explain Nature, that is not a process,it is an obseration of a system. The Design System, it can be very useful to look at design like that but their are far more than four bullet points to consider.
all design is based on emulating nature. all technology is based on emulating nature. nature shows us what is possible to achieve.
Yes you are correct! We have been trying to emulate nature…
em·u·late vt
- to try hard to equal or surpass somebody or something, especially by imitation
- to be successful in competing with or rival somebody or something
This is the problem…
Nature does show us what we are capable of, only we (Designers) are just starting to understand that we up until this point have done a half assed Job at actually truely fitting design into “Nature”. NOT trying to surpass, or compete with it.
I was fascinated to see a a description of human design as “Chess set with green and orange translucent blobs “ destined to landfills. To avoid confusion we shall refer to such human designs as “LandFillGRTBlobsâ€. Now, let me wish that this discussion remains focused on the design process of nature – which have been outlined as bullet points only for the purpose of brevity.
“Nature is Objective . Design is Subjective unless you think that alligators know about polar bears…â€
Nature is not Objective. Nature appears be lacking in purpose, though creatures are bent on improving their design. The system seems to work differently. Alligators do not know about polar bears. But humans claim greater intelligence and therefore I would expect designers to be aware of biologists and folks like Darwin who explained some very important design processes in very simple terms.
“all design is based on emulating nature. all technology is based on emulating nature. nature shows us what is possible to achieve.â€
What is shown is rarely learnt. How many LandFillGRTBlobs are emulations of nature ? Designers love fads. They create them. Nature is a big fad now. As correctly pointed out
“Nature does show us what we are capable of, only we (Designers) are just starting to understand that we up until this point have done a half assed Job at actually truely fitting design into “Nature”. NOT trying to surpass, or compete with it.â€
Hey, but we can learn from it and perhaps apply it. Competing??? . Do you really think we got a chance?
I would argue that the objective of nature is to propogate life and death.
Obviously, there would have to be more life than there were deaths. Otherwise, we would never move forward. So, maybe more specifically, the objective of nature is to mostly propogate and advance life. With death playing a role as the antagonist in an eternal drama.
The role of design follows a pattern as if it were Nature itself. We generate ideas all day long. These are the seeds. We share these ideas with our peers via some communication process. With enough positive energy, these seeds manifest themselves into a mass produced formed object, a website, or more ideas.
And, well, we know what happens to bad ideas. They usually die but are sometimes recycled.
There are a great many parallels with Nature and Design. People often like to differentiate them…but sometimes its hard to not see them as separate entities. I think they are the same.
There is now life on Mars and its not human, but human-based.
Soon these mechanical creatures will exist to function. But what’s not to say that, maybe, some microbes survived the journey to Mars. And are currently hibernating.
The Earth is moving closer to the Sun and is theorized to be a part of it. What this means is that, in time, the Earth will no longer be the 3rd rock from the sun. Our position in this solar system is what allows us to have life here on Earth. We are currently not too far or too close to the Sun.
But, in some distant future, maybe Mars will occupy our place in the solar system.
And life could theoretically result from Man’s intervention or Nature’s design?
the reason why individuals see design different from nature is the higtened emotional aspect of it and the way design is obtained through a system of production and manufacturing which is synthetic and profit oriented for lucrative business deals as apposed to an overall natural gain and sustainment. otherwise a design has to deal with gravity just as nature does.
but that’s the beauty of really good design.
how we deal.
metal, a hard substance, can be soft enough to wear.
sending a robot from our planet, across space, to another planet, landing in an environment equal to 1/3 Earth’s gravity in a Teflon ball-sack, getting out, looking around and sending some cool ass pictures:
very little about that trip was subjective except the desire to search for life.
there’s also another fundamental difference. man made laws are different from those followed by nature. man creates and modifies the laws for his own advancement whatever the motivation might be but nature obeys the laws that are exclusive to the natural cycle which is not written by man nor does it function the way man wishes it to function.
it’s an obstacle for man but essential for nature.